Ducks dive. You gotta kill them dead if you want to find them. Unless you have a good duck dog and you like to make him work, go with #4 or larger.

-Victor

4's

I love 5's. I puddle jump woodies here in GA with them. I also shot them in Canada and dropped cranes, geese, ducks and upland birds with them

From what ive been reading alot of guys who shoot bismuth say drop down 1 size from the lead shot they used back in the day

My experience both jump shooting over fresh water or shooting eiders and scoters in the salt was as follows:

Generally in the early part of the duck season when the ducks plumage is still fairly light we jump shot with #6 shot and same in the salt over 30 to 75 decoys as the shooting was close in.

As the duck season in our part of the north east, (plymouth, mass.) wore on and the ducks plumage got heavier due to increasing cold weather, we switched to heavier #4 shot.

I've been jump shooting ducks from a purpose built fiberglass kayak for many years, with doubleguns. If I use bismuth in my vintage ones, I go with 4s. Reason, you're shooting the toughest shot there is to bring a duck down dishrag dead ...... the rear-ender. You've got to drive shot up though the innards into the vitals because there's a good chance the head will be hidden behind the rest of it's body. It takes heavier shot to do that cleanly, and 4s will do it better than 5s in my opinion. I wouldn't use #6 bismuth for jump shooting any ducks. I don't do any jump shooting here until late season, times when it gets cold enough to ice over the ponds and lakes, causing all the ducks to be on current where there's no ice. Full plumage by then.

I just can't recall a missed shot, over my duck hunting life, that I believe was caused by using too large a shot size.

SRH