Nice catches. What do you do with them? We work hard on the East coast to restore and enhance river herring/shad populations, but the shad are a nuisance over your way
. We gave you striped bass too (at least in CA)!
Some folks smoke shad and eat them. Others fancy the roe. I don't really eat fish, so release everything.
Your set up sounds similar to what I use. Usually use a shad spoon in bright colors (green, pink, red, etc) 3-4' behind a 3/8-1/2oz sinker of some sort. Sometimes other small spoons work well, as do shad darts. It seems one day a certain color or lure is the hot ticket and the next day is something different. Cast across the current or downstream and fish them in the water column. There are some fly fishing guys that have it dialed in to. Some days they do better than hardware, some days not as good.
I also like to use a small jig head with a twisty tail grub. I went shad fishing last Friday and started with the spoon setup. Only caught a few and then switched to the small jig with a 1" chartreuse twister tail and hammered them. I guess I anchored in the right spot because I could fish the jig just to the side of my boat and watch them come up and hit it. Lots of fun.
