We got out on the lake early in the morning to see what the morning bite would bring us. Both Lisa and I had our Zebra Shad jerkbaits tied on and when we left the dock the surface temp was 68 degree and the water in the back of the creek was slightly stained. We made a few casts on a few points in the stained water but all we caught was a couple of dinks so we made our way out towards the mouth of the creek. It was a little slow to start with but once the sun got up a little and we found some clear water, the zebra shad started to do it’s stuff. We found fish around rocky points and in grassy pockets. I really believe the holographic dust on the little jerkbait really sets it off in the sunlight. We also noticed something about the zebra shad and why the little jerkbait pattern works right now. It seems that in a lot of the areas we are catching fish, there is a presence of gizzard shad, and the gizzards are around the same size as the zebra shad. Some of the bass we’ve been catching have been yacking up gizzards in the 3-4 inch size so we know we are matching the hatch with the size and color of the jerkbaits. We’ve came to the conclusion that the zebra shad has a close resemblance to the size of the area gizzards and the fish naturally react to it. We’ve caught fish on the shore and we’ve had fish chase the bait to the boat and whack it right by the boat in 30 feet of water.
We fished from around 9am till the rain rolled in around noon. We took a break and went back out when the skies cleared and the sun came back out around 6pm. We fished from 6pm till around 8:30pm and caught some nice evening fish on the same pattern. All tolled, we ended up boating 14 bass for the day and we had a few that shook the hook on the way to the boat. The jerkbait bite is still the #1 ticket for us right now and I think it’s a sure bet for a few fish while the gizzard population continues to patrol the shallows. Here’s a video of some of our fish on the zebra shad on 5-17-2014.