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High Plains Outdoors: Annual Shad Spawn

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Cedar Creek guide Jason Barber with freshly caught shad.
Luke Clayton

This week, Luke discusses the annual shad spawn. This is a period of bounty not only for game fish, such as white bass, catfish and hybrid stripers (wipers), but the angler as well!

Shad pull close to the shore at night to feed on zooplankton and by daylight each morning, catching is usually very good. Best bait is the shad that the game fish are feeding upon and a few throws of a four-foot cast net usually supplies all the bait necessary for a morning of fishing.

Luke prefers 17-pound test line with a foot or so of 10-pound test and a gold Aberdeen #2 crappie hook. Hang ups often occur and the light leader allows the 'break off' to occur at the terminal end of the line, near the hook rather than the mainline itself.

To learn more about what Luke is up to, visit catfishradio.org.

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Outdoors writer, radio host and book author Luke Clayton has been addicted to everything outdoors related since his childhood when he grew up hunting and fishing in rural northeast Texas. Luke pens a weekly newspaper column that appears in over thirty newspapers.
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