In this writing I am trying to explain the way of fishing with shads from a drifting boat powered by a 55 pounds backtroller. The best way to fish a shad is to drop it down to the bottom straight down, vertically. The rods we use are short, maximum 2 meters and very tense or sensitive in the top so you feel every hit or nibble how small it may be. When you are drifting the line will go diagonally but that’s a good thing because the shad is swimming more naturally and wiggles his tail when you lift it from the bottom. On the reel we put dyneema 6 to 10 lbs and I mount a leader from Fluo carbon on which I knot a dropshot.

Use weights for the fishing as heavy as necessary from 5 grams up to 21 grams in a light current such as a river. You can’t use heavier weights on the rods we use but if you need to have more weight, buy a stronger rod who handles up to 50 grams or so. Look at “tips”>”Shads” for rigging up a shad. We normally are using natural colors like white, white belly-brown back, rainbow trout and pearl from Culprit, Bass Assassin, Finn-S, and last but not least, Imperator ( looks like the good old “killer shad ).

Tactics about fishing the shad in a proper way is to lift the shad approx 10 cm from the bottom, hold for 2 – 3 seconds then let it slowly down. On the moment you hit the bottom, again wait 2 – 3 seconds before you lift it again and repeat. If you added a drop-shot, give your line some slack here so the walleye is able to suck up the drop-shot bait. I use long worm hooks instead of the original drop-shot hook to get an easier hookup with less slack.

Second tactic is to lift in levels. First lift a few centimeters with a quick short move from the wrist, wait 2 – 3 sec, lift again and lift again a few cm by a short quick lift from your rod tip made from the wrist, let the shad slowly down. Now and then you drop the shad hard on the bottom to create a dust cloud. Sometimes this will trigger the fish to bite.

Third tactic is diagonal fishing and here we make the same moves as described above but now we can ad something new and we leave the shad on the bottom without lifting at all and let it crawl. Most bites will come when your bait is NOT moving.

Greetings and tight lines

Bert