Fish Sniffer On Demand Digital Edition Issue 3623 Oct. 17- Nov. 10 2017 | Page 22

20 FRESHWATER Oct. 27 - Nov. 10, 2017 HOW TO By Cal Kellogg continued from page 15 you don’t want to sell yourself too short. You can always freeze the shad you don’t use, but if you run out on the water you’ll regret it. If you end up with frozen shad, allow them to partly thaw and then put them in the same brine you’d place fresh shad in. When the folks at bait shops freeze shad, they measure out a pound of bait, put it in a zip lock or vacuum sealed bag and toss them into the freezer. Unfortunately this is not the optimum system for preserving top notch bait. This is why the Delta’s top bait anglers freeze their own shad when they are plentiful and readily available. This way when fresh bait isn’t available you’ll have the next best thing. When preparing fresh bait for the freezer, place the shad in brine for 12 to 24 hours. Once brining is complete, remove your baits and place them in sandwich size zip lock bags. Lay the bag flat and move the shad around until they form a single layer covering the bottom of the bag. At that point squeeze out as much air as pos- sible, seal the bag and lay it out flat in the freezer. When it’s time to go fishing, take out as many packages as necessary and place them in your main ice chest where they will remain frozen. When you get to your fishing spot take the shad out one package at a time, remove the shad from the bag and put them into brine. If you opt to vacuum seal your shad, it is important to lay them out on a cookie sheet or piece of wax paper and freeze them before packaging them. If you vac- uum pack unfrozen shad the suction will damage them. Okay, so you’ve got some great shad, they’re in your bait cooler bobbing around in brine and you’ve just dropped the anchor in a promising looking area, how should you go about rigging those shad? Most Delta style bait fishing is done with an octopus hook tipped sliding sinker rig, so grab a leader armed with a 9/0 or 10/0 hook and snap it on the swivel at the end of your main line. Next grab a shad out of the cooler and place it on a cutting board. Using a razor sharp fillet knife, make a cut just behind the shad’s gill plate and ease the blade down the shad’s spine nearly to the tail, just like you’d fillet a gamefish. When your knife gets down toward the tail, withdraw the blade without detaching the fillet. The next step is to place the shad on the hook. Begin by passing the hook through the middle of the fillet working from the meat side, gently rotate the fillet 360 de- grees and pass the hook through the center of the filleted side of the shad. After that, locate the black spot near the shad’s head on the backside of the bait and push the hook point back up through that spot. Finally, open up the loop in the snell right behind the hook’s eye, place the shad’s tail through the loop and snug the line down. This sound complicated, but it is actually simple and only takes a few moments to complete. Now a lot of folks don’t think they have to bother with filleting the shad. I used to be one of those guys and I can tell you that if the technique I’ve outlined isn’t used you won’t be catching as many bass and you could be. Stripers use several different senses when the feed. Naturally stripers use their vision to see prey as well as their sense of smell to locate baits that can’t be seen. In addition to these senses, stripers also come equipped with a sensitive strip of nerves that run the length of their body on both sides. These nerves comprise the striper’s lateral line. Using the lateral line stripers can detect and zero in on movement and vibration. When a filleted and properly rigged shad sets in the current it offers stimulus for each of the senses a striper relies on when feed- ing. A filleted shad is rigged the way I’ve outlined will spin in the current. Since I use bluing on the shad they put off flash that the bass can see as the bait rotates, this rotation also creates vibrations that register on the striper’s lateral line and the fact that the bait’s flesh is exposed to the water encour- ages the bait to put off a strong scent trail. In general the best shad for day in day out use throughout the season is a shad that is about 2.5 inches long. When the water temperature drops into the lower 50’s, it often pays to begin upsizing your baits. Occasionally when you go to the bait shop, you’ll see a really large 4, 5 or 6 inch shad mixed in with the average size ones. I always buy those large baits even if the water is warm. I keep them in the brine as I fish and hoa