Through all of my trips to Mexico to fish, we’ve focused on the prolific tilapia as the forage of choice. After all, they fill the shallows and treetops, and pretty much every other trip we find a trophy-sized bass floating with a tilapia in its throat, killed by its own gluttony.

Nevertheless, I’m well aware that they don’t just eat the fast-breeding food fish. There are large “freshwater lobsters” in the lakes, and there are times when the bass are laser-focused on tiny shad half the size of your pinky. You’ll hook a fish and he’ll vomit out little puffs of glittery fish carcasses all the way back to the boat. In those circumstances, they’ll typically reject larger baits, but they’ll eat the fire out of a small popper or chrome trap.

Looking to those two extremes, it’s easy to forget that most baitfish are sized somewhere between a 2-inch shad and a 1-pound tilapia. On El Salto, as in many lakes, 4- to 7-inch shad are a plentiful source of nutrition.

Easy to forget, that is, until it’s staring you in the face.

Hanna caught a fish last week that still had the majority of an only partially-digested shad sticking out of its throat. When we pulled it entirely out, the fish probably lost 6 or 8 ounces.

Look at that tail. It appears almost exactly like the southbound end of one of my man Mike Bucca’s swimbaits. If that doesn’t give you the confidence to throw the Bull Shad on your next trip down, then you’re beyond all hope.