I was fishing last weekend mainly either on main lake points at the mouths of coves or a secondary point just inside of the cove.  I was on the water by 6 am two days and fished in the morning.  I was then back on the water about 5 or so that night and fished till dark.

The water was pretty dirty (for Lake of the Ozarks) and I caught all of my fish shallow on jigs, crankbaits, and a carolina rig.  I threw a spook and buzzbait quite a bit as well - but never caught anything on them.  Usually there was quite a bit of activity on the water's surface behind me (and this happens a lot).  No big splashes, just some smaller pops now and then and some baitfish breaking the surface.  I also usually see a lot of gar feeding pretty heavily in these situations.  I went out over these schools and threw a spook once for a while - but that was just for curiousity's sake.  

All of this brings me to some questions:

1) Does anyone regularly catch bass in the same spots as the gar are feeding (I caught a couple of smaller fish this past weekend).

2) When bass are feeding on a school of shad in open water - what is that going to look/sound like?  Will they be jumping and making a commotion or will it be more subtle?

3) When do you decide to move out and fish around those schools of baitfish in open water?

Any other thoughts - looking for anything related to shad?  

1.) I don't know much about fishing after gar. But if gar are chasing the shad, then bass will too! So I am sure yes.

2.) All you will see is a bunch of little fish jumping out of the water and a few splashes. There will be some swirls and commotion on the surface. But mostly you will see the shad jumping.

3.) Anytime, generally when fishing shad schools use baitfish imitation baits. Such as jerk-baits (hard or soft plastic) and cast PAST the school and work it into the school SLOWLY. A good bait to use when the shad are schooling would be a ZOOM fluke in Smokin' Shad or natural colors.

Here in Virginia, Lake Anna is plentiful in shad. Watch the wind too, if the wind is blowing 5-10 mph go towards a wind blown bank, especially if the bank is a rip-rap. The wind currents will turn up micro-organisms off the rocks which attract smaller fish, which in turn attract shad and bass move into the shad to feed.

For topwaters, if the school is breaking but there's not a lot of comotion, cast out a smaller popper or mini spook, throwing a big spook will spook the school and the fish will scatter. Or if you want to use the big spook cast it PAST the school and work it into it. That's the key when fishing shad schools!

Good luck!

Lure choice- 1st throw a reaction bait like a vibe, this will tell you alot about the school of fish you are seeing. Poppers and other topwaters will generally work, but keep in mind that the fish are schooling in the AREA, not just on that 1 spot where the surface bustin is happening.

After you get a handle on the mood of the fish, you'll notice that the feeding comes in waves. This is a result of the schooling nature of the bait, when they scatter, the school "breaks up" while the bass are chasing individuals, or dropping down to get back in position.

Once I have identified the features which the bait and feeding fish are keying on (structure/wind/cloud cover/mudline) I will typically go to 2 types of presentations.

1-Dropshot or rollinrunner/ fishhead spin

2-hornytoad/popper or vibe/deep crank

#1 is typically effective on the deeper schoolers that are semi-active

#2 is typically effective for the actively feeding fish

If you get the chance to just sort of observe, you will notice that schoolers will follow the same patterns of feeding day after day, and from 1 year to the next in certain areas during certain seasons.

Also, there are other factors like the gar, or stripers and sandys. There is a stretch of Lake texoma that the striper guides work over everyday from march to october. There is about an hour and a half of good schooling activity in the area, and it is broken into 3 phases. early the stripers and sandys will go nuts on the shad schools. Immediatly following this, the smallies will turn on then the spots and LMB in the same areas. These LMB, Smallie, Spot schools arent roaming, they live on certain structure which the striper schools pass over, so in effect you have multiple groups of fish feeding in succession based out of a "home area". You will know it is time to move when you start seeing the gar come through for clean up. So you move to the back of the striper school as it passes the next prominant structure feature, and wait for the "bass", rinse and repeat.

Now this is a very pronounced pattern in a very particular spot, and Im not saying it always happens like this, but I have been able to replicate this pattern on multiple lakes. It just takes some evaluation of the stucture features and overiding factors.

Thanks!