Shad Spawn 101: How to Catch Tennessee River Bass on Offshore Shell Bars

In Part One of this three part series you'll learn how to get on an epic shad-spawn bite on Tennessee River reservoirs. Bass pro David Walker explains how to find and catch bass on shallow, offshore shell bars between late April and early June.

Major League Fishing pro David Walker taught in an impromptu "Shad Spawn 101" class in early May while fishing on camera in an MLF Now! Livestream of the Bass Pro Tour’s Stage 4 tournament on Tennessee's Lake Chickamauga. | Photo by Phoenix Moore, Major League Fishing

To catch boatloads of big Tennessee River bass during a shad spawn, Major League Fishing Pro David Walker spends his mornings casting reaction baits and finesse rigs at freshwater mussel beds on the tops of shallow, offshore bars.

“You target them on top, wherever the shells tend to be,” Walker explains in a phone interview this week. “It's not very common to have shells down along the break. They tend to be up on the very top.”

The best bars to target on Tennessee River reservoirs during a shad-spawn will be located shallow in main-channel or secondary-channel current and topped with gravel or freshwater mussel colonies. 

“You can catch them right on the main-channel bars, but typically those are a little deeper,” Walker says. “So it's kind of that secondary channel – the creek channel that's running out, heading towards the main river. … “If the bar is way too isolated, the shad may never really get around it that much.”

Access to nearby deep water will make some bars better than others. “You want that little depth nearby,” Walker advises. “The shad are not gonna be too far removed from any little bit deeper water.”

Avoid slack-water bars, which collect silt, making for a softer bottom than shad prefer to spawn on. “They don't have that clean, hard spot, which is really what you want,” Walker explains.

To catch boatloads of big Tennessee River bass during a shad spawn, Major League Fishing Pro David Walker spends his mornings casting reaction baits and finesse rigs at freshwater mussel beds on the tops of shallow, offshore bars. | Photo courtesy David Walker and Major League Fishing, photographer unknown.

What Is a Shad Spawn and Why Does It Matter for Bass Fishing?
Quite simply, a “shad spawn” is a period in the spring when female shad lay eggs and male shad fertilize them. Shad species are a main forage for bass. Gizzard shad are more populous than threadfin shad on Tennessee River reservoirs – something to remember when choosing bait sizes and colors.

The construction of multiple power-generation dams on the Tennessee River created a string of world-class fisheries from Kentucky, through Tennessee, into Alabama, and back into Tennessee. The jewels in the river’s crown, most bass anglers would agree, are Lake Chickamauga (TN), Guntersville Lake (AL), Pickwick Lake (AL/TN/MS), Kentucky Lake (KY/TN) and Wheeler Lake (AL). Other reservoirs on the river are Wilson Lake (AL), Nickajack Lake (TN), Fort Loudoun Reservoir (TN), Tellico Reservoir (TN) and Watts Bar Reservoir (TN).

Tennessee River shad generally spawn between late April and early June on shallow, hard-bottom areas when water temps are between 65 and 75 degrees. Hard-bottom areas can include offshore shell and gravel bars and rip-rap banks. Shad will also spawn around docks and marinas, on grass flats and in shallow backwaters.

Shad generally spawn at night, through dawn and sunrise, and into the early morning. An overcast day can extend a shad-spawn bite into late morning or early afternoon, but don’t bet on it.

On May 1 this spring, Walker was fishing on camera in an MLF Now! Livestream of the Bass Pro Tour’s Stage 4 tournament on Chickamauga. Viewers watched as he caught several keeper bass per hour during a shad-spawn bite that, thanks to an overcast sky, lasted well into the late morning.

“Shad spawns are a big deal,” Walker says in the livestream video, now archived and available to watch on-demand here. “When you can get on one, man, it's awesome. But the problem is it ends. That rest of the day is where you really got to figure out what else to do – because waiting for it to happen again ain't gonna happen.”

To learn more about Walker’s strategies for catching Tennessee River bass all day during a shad spawn, check out Pt. 2 of our Shad Spawn 101 series next week.

To locate offshore, shell-topped bars with potential to produce big bass during a shad spawn, Lowrance Pro David Walker suggests looking for islands on your fish-finder’s lake map. Islands will often be surrounded by bars and saddles, both of which can be seen around the islands in this C-MAP REVEAL Chickamauga chart screengrab. They are the offshore orangish-yellow and orange areas. | C-MAP REVEAL South East Lake Chickamauga chart screengrab

Look on Your Map for Islands, Creek Junctions & Bends
To locate offshore, shell-topped bars with potential to produce big bass during a shad spawn, Walker suggests looking for islands on your fish-finder’s lake map. 

“Where there’s existing islands, there tends to be bars that are running out off of those,” he explains. Saddles – small bars between islands – are good too. “Those are both key areas.”

Look on your map also for areas in which a submerged creek intersects another creek or makes a drastic turn.

“Places where there’s junctions, or where the creek channel maybe makes an exaggerated turn this way or that way and swings around, those kind of messy areas tend to be prone to have more of those bars,” Walker says. “Not to say that there’s not some isolated shell bars, but it’s not as common.”

It is common however, for some bass pros to use the words “bar” and/or “shoal” when referring to the same structure.

“Yeah tomato, ‘tomahto,’” Walker says, adding a caveat. “But ‘shoal,’ to me, I look at as being a little more broader term. Like, a shoal could be a half-mile long. It could be really broad. … And a ‘bar’ is more of a term for more like a strip of [submerged] land – something that's like a board laying there; it's longer and it's narrower and higher in the middle.”

Lowrance Pro David Walker relies on a C-MAP REVEAL South East chart card to help him find and catch big bass on Tennessee River reservoirs. The orange and orangish-yellow offshore structures seen here are shallow bars likely to have mussel beds on top. | C-MAP REVEAL South East Lake Chickamauga chart screengrab

Offshore Bars Easy To Find on C-MAP charts
A Lowrance pro, Walker relies on a C-MAP REVEAL South East chart card to help him find and catch big bass on Tennessee River reservoirs. C-MAP is exclusive to Lowrance, Simrad and B&G chartplotters

“This is the best mapping I’ve ever had,” Walker says in a video published in 2019, after C-MAP began offering new high-resolution bathymetry maps of high-profile U.S. lakes it had surveyed comprehensively. “This C-MAP is unbelievable, it shows it all.”

Chickamauga, Pickwick, Guntersville, Kentucky Lake, Wheeler and other Tennessee River reservoirs, were among the first destination fisheries C-MAP surveyed for inclusion in its REVEAL-card portfolio. C-MAP REVEAL cards feature one-foot contours, a high-resolution Digital Elevation Model (“Shaded Relief) layer and high-res satellite imagery. 

“Information like that is usually what the locals know, because they’ve fished there for so many years,” Walker explains. “Now you can plug it in and you know what the locals know, because it’s right there in the mapping, spot on.”

David Walker watches and waits while a Major League Fishing official weighs a bass he caught May 1 while competing in a Bass Pro Tour tournament on Lake Chickamauaga, a Tennessee River reservoir. | Photo by Phoenix Moore, Major League Fishing

Target Freshwater Mussel Beds on the Tops of Bars
On Chickamauga on May 1, Walker virtually anchored his boat in seven to nine feet of water while casting reaction baits and finesse rigs to the highest spots on offshore bars that topped out in three to four feet. That’s where big, hard freshwater mussels aggregate.

Unlike tiny zebra mussels, Tennessee River freshwater mussel species are big. “It's a substantial shell,” Walker says. “So when you've got a whole patch of those, it's asphalt down there to the fish. It's a hard, hard-structure bottom. And that's what keeps the silt away and that’s what the shad like to spawn around.”

You won’t find mussels too far out of current because, as filter feeders, they “rely on water currents to supply nutrients for growth and reproduction,” the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency explains on its website.

Despite the total size of an offshore, shallow bar, your strike-zone will often be limited to the portion holding the mussel colony. “Most of the fish I caught [May 1 on Chickamauaga] were all within a cast of each other,” Walker says.

David Walker sets the hook on a bass May 1 while fishing on Lake Chickamauga, a Tennessee River reservoir. | Major League Fishing MLF Now! livestream screengrab

Save Your Waypoints -- The Same Bars Can Be Good Every Year
Be sure to save your waypoints – the same spots on many Tennessee River reservoirs’ offshore, shallow bars will produce bass bites year after year, often on the same baits.  

“It’s very common – same area, same way,” Walker says. “Unless something changes – you get some type of habitat change. Maybe grass starts growing there. Maybe there’s really low water one year.” 

“I think that has a lot to do with not so much visual things that we see, but current flow,” Walker explains. “I think a lot of fish are very keen on what sets up differently. How does it probably feel to them, how the water moves there?”

Walker's Shad Spawn Tactics Can Work on Your Reservoir or River
With slight modifications for local variables, Walker’s Tennessee River shad-spawn tactics can work on other rivers and reservoirs throughout the country, including Alabama’s Walter F. George Reservoir (AKA “Lake Eufaula”) on the Chatahoochee River, Lake Dardenelle and some other Arkansas River areas, Mississippi River pools 4-9, and the Ohio River and its tributaries, Cumberland River and Green River.