Night fishing with light and shad net

The #3 monofilament sounds about right to me, Na3vy. Make sure your stretch is vertical and then lay the net on the floor and use a 3-foot ruler or something straight and flat to line up the top and cut across. It's not important that you get it perfect. Thread the all-thread rod through the loops and then cut the net a loop or two above the rod. At this point, I'd turn the rod to wrap up a small portion of the net (maybe a turn or two). Then take some braid and tie and knot around the rod and wrapped loops all the way across the rod about 6-inches apart. You can roll the rod one side more than the other to make it even before you do the tying.

Then make sure you have about 5-6 feet of stretched net and do the same on the bottom. Everything does not have to be perfect. The net I am using is slanted and has torn spots in it but it still catches all the shad I want. The net may have a bit of an hourglass look to it and that's okay too as long as it isn't overly pronounced. If it is, you can thread braided line down the sides of the net and tie it off so as to take some of the hourglass out but still keep some tension in the net.

Lowes and Home Depot sell a braided line that is 1/8th inch, I believe that I use to hang the net. If you have paracord, that would work but I like a cord a little heavier than that. Tie the cord on each end of the upper rod with a good v-shape in the middle. I then take the top of the "V" and tie a loop in it to attach the hanging cord to. I like at least a 20-foot drop cord and I tie a loop every three feet or so which allows me to hang the net at whatever depth I want down to about 18-feet.

I use a lot of either hot glue or superglue on every knot so it doesn't come loose. When you tie that braid around the all-thread, it will lie in one of the thread-grooves and then when you tie and glue it, it aint going anywhere. It's a bit of a pain but it beats the net sliding up and down the rod. When you get done with your work of art, it mite not hang straight but it'll be close enough to capture shad.

The nets are a bit tedious to make but once finished, they will last a long long time. Unless you do something idiotic like me like forgetting to take them out of the water before I get the boat up on a plane. I have also cleverly done that with the submersible light. Neither the light nor the net fair too well when you do stupid stuff like that.

Looks like all the storms will blow out of here before dark so maybe I can get out on the water finally. If the fishing sucks, I can blame it on the storms.


Cheers.....

One thing that perturbs me when I am out night fishing with my lights and shad nets are the gar. They'll swim around about 5-feet down in plain view and occasionally glide up to the shad net and scarf up a shad or two. So my answer to this is this:


I've got it on a 10-foot pole:

That has an eyescrew on the end with 20-feet of line attached.


The end of the line has a loop which I put on my wrist and this gives me about 25-30 feet to stick a gar. I miss a lot but they always come back and usually go to gar-heaven before the night is over. A lot of times, the gar will also clamp down on a shad in the net and get the net in their teeth. They don't have the sense to let go and you can slowly pull the net up and beat em in the head. Lots of gar in heaven because of me. Gar usually show up when the water is really warm in the 85-90 degree range.

Cheers.....

butchr said:

Thanks for posting on your ways of night fishing, I used to crappie fish with submersible lights and had a blast. Always saw lots of shad but never thought about using a shad net to catch them so thanks for the idea.

Click to expand...

There is one place which I fish that I can actually see the ramp from my fishing spot. I catch walleye, stripers, hybrids, catfish, crappie and white bass there. I've gone back to that same spot in the daytime, and I'd be lucky to get a bite. The only difference is fish feed more aggressive at night plus the light brings in the shad which gets the fishing going. I have found that when I have a lot of shad around, the fishing is really good for an hour or two and then it seems like the fish have all had their fill of shad and they get lock jaw. Also, if the white bass are around, they will jump on a shad right away whereas the walleye seem to want to study the bait for a bit before taking it. I used to hate white bass for that. There were nights where I'd get 10 white bass for every walleye bite I got. Used to refer to the white bass as cockroaches. But then Norfork fell on hard times with fish-kills on stripers where I believe it was three years in a row thousands ended belly-up because of lack of oxygen in the Fall. And during that time we had a white bass die-off which wiped out all the big white bass. The white bass are back now and I find the critters pretty darned good eating. The stripers are slowly coming back but where the average striper used to be 20 pounds, now it's more like 10.

But getting back to night fishing, I agree with you that it's a blast. It's really great in the heat of the Summer because it's cool and you don't have the sun blazing down on you. Usually very little wind as well. Most of the yahoos with their speedboats and skidoos are gone and on some nights, it seems like I am the only boat out there. But even if the place is full of boats like the 4th of July when they are doing fireworks and all the folks are drinking beer and watching it, I can be sitting on a point with my lights out and fishing and not be bothered because I am out of the runway for any crazies racing up and down the lake. Nothing like fishing and watching a good fireworks show at the same time.


Cheers.....

Night of 12 May.

A nice night, weatherwise. 73 degrees under clear skies with a water temp of 73. When I first started I had three rods out with shad on them and they all got hit at once by hybrids. One into the anchor rope and broke off, one into the shad net and one on the rod I grabbed and got in. Just little 3-pounders but they go where the wanna go on that first run. I decided at that point to flash the light and get shad into the net and then shake the shad out of the net and put them in the live-well and only put the net down when I needed more shad. One less obstacle to put up with that way. In the end, it wasn't a great day fishing but still okay with 3 hybrids, 2 largemouth, 1 crappie and a couple of white bass.

You can see how the shad scatter when I flash the light:



One pound crappie:


Six pound hybrid:


Unhappy Largemouth:


The crappie swallowed the hook and that largemouth was mis-shapened so I decided to throw in the fry pan. Being Friday night, it was pretty busy. Seen two boats whiz by between dark and midnight.


Cheers.....

Night of 13 May:

Took one of my fishing buddies and the two of us didn't do any better than me fishing alone. Water was 75 degrees so it's heating up. Once it gets up to about 80 degrees, you can't put the shad in the live-well anymore - unless you like cooked shad. That's when you just leave the shad in the net hanging and just pull it up to bait your hook. Anyway, we only got two hybrids and two whites. A ton of shad but no big fish right now.

Shad in the live-well


Our take:


Cheers.....

Yeah, ice works okay for a short period of time. What I used to do way back when was attach a 25-foot garden hose to the input of my live-well on the stern of the boat. The threading on those PVC tubes have the same threading as a regular garden hose. Then I put about a pound of weight on the other end of the garden hose and throw the whole thing overboard. It drops down 25-feet and brings cold water into the livewell. Works very well as long as you don't forget it's down there when you start up your engine. When it's time to move, you just pull the hose up and coil it in the back of the boat. I used a right-angle fitting on the PVC which allowed the hose to hang straight down, otherwise it would kink and shut off the water intake.

On my new boat, someone cut the extra length off the intake tube to make it look pretty. I really don't feel like going through the elephant dance of replacing my live-well pump just to get that 1 inch of extra threaded tube to attach the garden hose too so I'll just suffer without. But if I do have to change out the pump, you can bet I'll be leaving that extra length on to attach the garden hose to.

As I mentioned before, when the surface water gets too hot for the shad, just leaving them in the net and the net down 10 or so feet will keep them alive for as long as you are fishing. It's easy enough to just pull the net up and get a shad for my hook and then let it drop down again. The only problem with that up here on Norfork and maybe Bull is that really big fish will wrap around the net and when that happens, you can kiss them goodbye.


Cheers.....

They probably would but unless you had an internal aerator for the live well (which I don't) it wouldn't last long constantly puting lake water in the live-well which would be in the 80-90 degree range. In my present setup, I find leaving the fish in the net in their comfort zone 10-15 feet down works fine and they last all night.

Might add that I do the same for the fish I catch. I have a heavy-duty stringer with a 3-lb ball on the end of 30-feet of line and when the surface temp gets above about 75, I hook the fish to the stringer and sink it down 10-20 feet. Even stripers and hybrids can last that way. It means one more obstacle when I am fighting a fish but I can live with that. Nothing worse than a striper or hybrid that been floating around in 80 degree water in a live well. This wouldn't work to well if you were moving the boat around a lot but I usually sit in one place all night.


Cheers......

The only problem with leaving them in the net (aside from an obstacle when bringing in a fish) is the poor little things get picked out of the net by gar and even other fish. I actually caught a pretty nice walleye that clamped down on a shad and wouldn't let go until I had a landing net over it. I've killed a number of gar that either couldn't get their teeth untangled or maybe they just wanted that shad too much. I'd be bringing up the net and feel it pulse by a gar trying to back up and get it all the way to the surface where I would smack it on the head with a club. Ya had to be careful to smack em hard enough to stun them but not hard enough to tear the net.

Shad do need a lot of oxygen to survive and I would have thought being stationary in a net might do them in but it doesn't. Apparently their gill plates still work and they are able to pump water across their gills to get oxygen. I might lose a few but most survive just fine.


Cheers....

Might add that when you are fishing this way, the shad will build up slowly and the best fishing is usually the first two or three from when you start. After awhile, the shad will be in that glow of the light in the thousands. Last night, every time I flashed the light after a few hours, the water was alive with them. When you get to that condition, it seems like all the fish have fed up to the point they will either just "mouth" the bait or not bite at all. I tried turning off the light for 15-20 minutes to allow the shad to move on but it doesn't work very well or maybe all the fish are sitting on the bottom fat and happy and burping. About all you can do is bring everything in and find another place to fish. I've tried to get a decent picture of them but there's always too much glare. I'll keep trying though and post a picture if it's any good.


Cheers....