I live in the NEK in VT and the 3" black shads are an absolute slayer when it comes to fishing the Trout lakes up here. I use them when I'm jigging shallower 35-60ft when you start jigging in 70FT + they take a little long to get down to the fish. But my god if you get one of these in front of a laker, it's almost guaranteed he's going to eat it. I'll use bigger swimbaits here and there. but this is my #1 confidence bait, and the bait I make all of my guests use at it has such a high success rate. Alot of the old locals look at me like I have three heads when I show them what I'm using for lakers. Funniest encounter was some old guy told me that jigging DOES NOT work for them, you HAVE to troll for lake trout, needless to say he was so mad when he kept trolling by me empty handed, and I was hooked up every single time right in front of him hammering them on the jig.