Hi Willard fishing experts. Is there a time when all the many small shad are going to start to die and all the game fish are going to start gorging on them, and therefore the fishing will become very very slow? Are we at that time yet? Thx
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[#0000ff]Noticeable fall dieoffs usually happen beginning around the first of November. Every year I have trips when first light reveals a lot of dead or dying baby shad on the surface. And the gulls, terns and grebes get very busy slurping up the evidence. By the time most anglers hit the water there are few dead shad to be seen.
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[#0000ff]The ones dying are usually small...under about 2 inches. These are the latest to hatch over a several week spawn period. They starve when zooplankton numbers plummet in colder water...and zooplankton is all they can eat.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Once baby shad get about that size they usually lose their "baby teeth" that allows them to catch and eat zooplankton. Then their body changes to enable them to feed on algae and detritus...expanding their available diet. This is from a DWR writeup:[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff][font "Arial Black"][#000000][size 2]This includes a longer digestive tract, loss of teeth and gradual movement of the mouth toward the bottom side of the fish. Adult shad feed by pump-filtering water…filling the mouth and then straining the water with the gill rakers at the back of the mouth. They have to filter a lot of water every day to get the nutrition they need to survive and grow.[/size][/#000000][/font][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][#0000ff][b]In years like this one, the active predators like wipers and walleye have been feeding on larger shad at will and do not react much to the dying little tykes. But catfish and smaller members of other species chow down on the ones that sink to the bottom.[/#0000ff][/b][/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff][#0000ff][b]Here is a picture of a dead shadlet I scooped up on a trip a couple of years ago.[/#0000ff][/b][/#0000ff]
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