The main forage here is shad. I would like to know what shad imitating soft plastics you recommend. I need to know the lures and the rigs (fish are usually deep here)

Any fluke type of bait.  Texas rig them.  Weightless, weighted hook, pegged bullet sinker, unpegged, drop shot, etc etc.

Or a shad imitating swimbait.

Flukes. Tried drop shoting them yesterday and absolutely killed. I have also had great success texas rigging them.

big fish love a deep diving crankbait! make sure it has a tight wobble to imitate a shad. if you want a lot of fish then a  soft plastic jerkbait will work great. rig it on a weighted hook (1/16 ounce). if you are after a giant fish try fishing a storm wildeye swim shad. fish it right over the bottom and give a couple jerks upward to make any fish nearby or following the lure will create a reaction strike. if all else fails try using a lipless crankbait. won a tournament fishing 30 ft of water using a lipless crankbait. mainly because of a 6 pound kicker.

Just Carolina Rig a Fluke and hang on tight.

Flukes in all it 's sizes

Sluggos

Jerk Worms

Bass Assasin Shad Assasin

Shad Shape Worm

Shaddick

In practical terms, any soft plastic jerkbait.

may i suggest a Rapala shad rap, thank you

Show me a soft plastic shad rap and I'll instantly buy it. 

I have a new soft plastic swimbait and its 4 inches long and fat- I named it THE FAT BASS DIT -Road Warrior might have a pic. These are killa on the 1/4 oz  pro Shak-e

lake fork tackle live magic shad is hard to beat.

fluke a close second for me.

there are many listed that others like too.

I'm really liking my Shadalicious swimbaits at the moment. My two go to colors/sizes are the 4.5 inch ones in neon ghost minnow and of course, sexy shad.

I tried one of these this morning, was fairly impressed with the action(only threw it for a couple of minutes, no fish landed, however).