Big Indiana Bass

The shad that were spawned back in the spring are now swimming around in our lakes in large numbers, just about the right size for most everything to begin feeding upon them. Numerous studies on a variety of gamefish show that when available, a good portion of a predator's diet through the entire period from late summer through most of the fall will be comprised of shad. They simply become the most prolific prey in the ecosystem, and are at the right size for a majority of gamefish to swallow. They'll outgrow a lot of gamefish mouths though by winter, so the binge can be short lived.

With Labor Day over, pleasure boat traffic will start dropping off tremendously, and as cooler water temps prevail, lots of fish start feeding up, bass among them. But this is usually the start of crappie season for me, and as such, I went out this weekend and bought my state launch permit for the rest of the year. I also decided to spend some time chasing crappie out on Raccoon Saturday, and captured some neat side imaging shots of these shad schools. Here are a couple of them. The first appears to be almost entirely one long twisting group of shad. I'm not so certain the second isn't a group of white bass terrorizing a school of shad. Wish I had a jigging spoon to have dropped down at the time.