02-12-2015, 01:43 AM
I've seen a lot of strange things at Lake Mead, but the strangest one happened in the Wash about a month ago now.
I had netted a bucket of gizzard shad, and was introducing my Utah buddy to fishing live shad for striper. I was trolling a shad about 75' behind me along that step at the mouth of the wash where it drops from about ~3 feet to ~10. I was about to make a u-turn, so I started burning in my shad in, when BAM, fish on.
So start fighting this thing (fought like an average striper), get it up to the boat, grab my boga, and what the hell do I see? One of those big 20" gizzard shad. "Oh dang I snagged a gizzard shad," I thought. As i get it next to the boat i see something that made my head explode: the hook was IN the shads mouth--not near it, not superficially in it, but UP IN that little stinky branch polisher. Me and the boaters beside us were laughing, blown away.
So I can only speculate what happened: I'm ruling out predation completely because gizzard shad, even adults, simply don't prey on other fish. That leaves scenario A: I happened to hit the craziest, most insanely miniscule odds of snagging this fish at the perfect angle to where the hook actually made itself into it's mouth. Then scenario B, which is that the mature gizzard shad was trying to interact with the shad on my hook--territorial behavior by nipping at the shad maybe? I dragged my shad through a school of mixed size gizzard shad and they began to school with my shad? No clue. Mind blown.
So that's that, up there on my top 5 weird Mead experiences is this one.
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I had netted a bucket of gizzard shad, and was introducing my Utah buddy to fishing live shad for striper. I was trolling a shad about 75' behind me along that step at the mouth of the wash where it drops from about ~3 feet to ~10. I was about to make a u-turn, so I started burning in my shad in, when BAM, fish on.
So start fighting this thing (fought like an average striper), get it up to the boat, grab my boga, and what the hell do I see? One of those big 20" gizzard shad. "Oh dang I snagged a gizzard shad," I thought. As i get it next to the boat i see something that made my head explode: the hook was IN the shads mouth--not near it, not superficially in it, but UP IN that little stinky branch polisher. Me and the boaters beside us were laughing, blown away.
So I can only speculate what happened: I'm ruling out predation completely because gizzard shad, even adults, simply don't prey on other fish. That leaves scenario A: I happened to hit the craziest, most insanely miniscule odds of snagging this fish at the perfect angle to where the hook actually made itself into it's mouth. Then scenario B, which is that the mature gizzard shad was trying to interact with the shad on my hook--territorial behavior by nipping at the shad maybe? I dragged my shad through a school of mixed size gizzard shad and they began to school with my shad? No clue. Mind blown.
So that's that, up there on my top 5 weird Mead experiences is this one.
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