Clockwise, from top left: minnow, crayfish, sunfish, shad, frog, and grasshopper. Fathead minnows, leeches and worms are mainstays in bait-shop refrigerators across the country. These old standards ...

From Northern Florida to Maine, American and hickory shad leave the ocean and pile into coastal rivers every spring to spawn. I’d argue that every East Coast angler should learn how to catch shad. In ...

Although throwing topwater baits is exciting, expecting those explosive blow-ups, reaction baits with better hook-up ratios will put more fish in your boat during Tennessee River reservoir shad-spawns ...