My friend fish a tournament today in a local TVA lake.  He said there were shad and shiners floating everywhere.

Water temps were in the mid 50s up to 60.

I can understand it if we had experienced some cold weather in the last few days, but our daytime highs have been in the upper 70s with lows in the mid 50s.

Water quality???

Par for the course.  Friend said the upper end of the lake was quite muddy with a reddish slick on top.  I figured the slick was from all of the red clay in that portion of the lake.

I've never been on this lake in the spring.  Usually pretty clear in the summer.

The lake I fished on Saturday still had a shad die off going.  Not many but a jerkbait bite was the only thing going. Temps were in the mid 50's.  I imagine it's probably just older, larger shad stressed out from the long winter.

The ones that we saw were large 6" shad and 3" shiners.  The only good bite I got was on a jerkbait and the others that did catch fish were all on flukes.