Shad!
As seen in California Fly Fisher,
April 2005
© 2005 Jim Zech
There are two days that that occur this time of year which invoke a devotional reverence among certain adherents: one of these most significant days always falls on a Sunday and usually involves bringing the family around to search the backyard for hidden ova of domesticated game fowl, devour the hindquarters of a (seemingly religiously inappropriate) pig covered with (what should be historically anachronistic) tropical fruit rings, and then sit around the TV and watch Charleton Heston pretend to be an ancient Jewish hero; the other most significant day of Spring is when the first shad arrives in our local rivers. Now I’m not a religious man, so I should probably talk mostly about Easter, since the subject of shad seems to inspire more religious awe than anything else among many from the crowd that I hang with, but since this is a fly fishing magazine I think I’ll talk mostly about Valley Forge.
Apparently and apocryphally, when George Washington’s troops were wintering at Valley Forge they were saved from certain military defeat and possible death by starvation with the arrival of huge schools of protein in the form of the shad that swam into the Delaware River that spring. Interesting historical fact of almost total irrelevance to our discussion except that the fact of the fecundity of the shad run provides some insight into why fly fishing for shad has such enthusiastic adherents—you can catch a lot of them. [If you are interested in how many shad it takes to feed an army see; The Founding Fish, John Mcphee; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; October 2002]
Sometimes in May I go to the Florida Keys to fish for tarpon and my friend Bernie just can’t understand why I would do such a stupid thing; he can’t understand why I would leave the Sacramento Valley during shad season to fish for something else. The remarkable thing is that Bernie is genuinely sincere when he makes this comment. Truth be told, if allowed Bernie would take off the entire months of May and June and would spend each day fishing for shad, and he is far from being the only fly angler with this passion. Shad seems to make some fly fishers talk and behave crazy like this. But not all fly anglers share this ebullient enthusiasm. Informally I would have to say that 65% of all local fly fishers are insane for shad, and the other 65% are somewhat less crazy about them. And to me this statistic is interesting—not only because it makes no sense, but because although it is the case that nearly every fly fisher likes to fish for trout, all are enchanted with the mystery of steelhead, most would like to catch a big striper, but half of all fly fishers care only a little about shad. Those that do care about shad fishing care BIG time. No other game fish that I can name simultaneously inspires such devotion and such dis-inspiration. Why?
[I will admit that I am part of the 65% that is less crazy about the shad; however that does not mean that I do not have a lot of experience with them. I am the dis-passionate observer and reporter of an interesting phenomenon–a sports reporter describing the big game rather than the ball player on the diamond trying to kick the puck through the goalposts.]
But let me try to answer the question of why most fly anglers are devoted to shadding and why many fly anglers are not after I try to provide a little preliminary backstory.
First let’s talk a little about what shad are. Shad are an anadromous fish, (not “andromedas,” “anamadrous,” “amadrashadicus,” or any other mangalation of the word), which means that they live to maturity in the ocean and return to their natal rivers to spawn. They are apparently filter feeders, but will strike at artificial flies with a repetitive and mindless abandon. Apart from this little is apparently known of their natural history here on the west coast where the shad are not as commercially valuable a fish as they are on the east coast, which means that there is little funding for research on their natural history; [For information on the natural history of shad on the east coast, again see McPhee, The Founding Fish; op-cit, ibid, et-al, etc].
Shad are a herring, or at least related to them, which brings me to what is actually the most significant fact about shad in regard to our discussion: shad, like their cousins the herring, like their own company; they like to travel in huge schools. Tarpon are in the herring family also and sometimes travel in large schools, but more often they don’t. Herring and shad seem to always be found in large schools, and that’s what seems to make these 65% of fly anglers so enamored of them, the shad anyway. (Fly fishing for true herring is another story altogether. Like the shad they can be caught on a fly during their spawning migration, but purse-seining for them seems to be the preferred method of capture.)
When I said before that a celebrated day of spring is when shad arrives in our rivers I wasn’t referring to a shad, “Mr. Shad,” “Johnny the First Shad of Spring.” No, I was talking about “shad” in the plural–the very, very plural. Shad can literally swarm into our rivers like killer bees swarm in the imagination of a B movie screenplay writer. Shad schools can be remarkably large; so large, in fact, that they sometimes actually darken the river bottom with their bodies much in the way that passenger pigeons once darkened the 19th Century North American sky with theirs’, that is before we slaughtered the birds into extinction, of course. The pigeons were apparently popular table fare.
As implied by what we have discussed before–the Valley Forge thing–shad are edible. I’ve even eaten them. I’ve eaten them pickled and don’t think that I’d go to the trouble to try to pickle them myself, and I’ve eaten the roe and am sure that I won’t be doing that again, unless it is in an expertly constructed, seaweed wrapped concoction dipped in sinus–clearing wasabi for which I have paid way, way too much. Then I might enjoy it more. But I am a born-and-bred average American for whom protein is easy to come by. For some folks, however, who grew up in other less fortunate cultures protein is best and most affordably harvested straight from nature, not from H.Salt. And abundant protieniferous fauna such as shad (and passenger pigeons) are very attractive and mostly free to the poor and hungry with a penchant for angling. Those of you who have fished for shad for decades know of the decline in their numbers to which I am tangentially implying. You also know of the large bag limit allowed on shad, and of how even such a large bag limit is frequently exceeded by many of those not practicing catch and release. Since I have absolutely no genuine statistical information on shad populations and only believe that the numbers are declining, because of the fact that all of my pertinent information is anecdotal information, I’ll just leave the implication of there being fewer shad because they are being more enthusiastically eaten at a simple common sensical innuendo. That is the best kind of information upon which to organize a mob anyway, just to be inciteful [not a misspelling].
Now for an in-depth discussion of the techniques used to catch shad: stand in the right spot and use the right line; tie something bead-chain goggle-eyed, neon-bright enough to have come out of a North Korean reactor, and with a dangerously sharp hook in it onto your leader; cast a lot. If you do these things at the right time of year you will catch shad, possibly quite a few.
The Right Spot
In California the right spots for shad are very likely going to be found on the lower reaches of the Sacramento, American, Yuba, or Feather rivers, somewhere below the fish-ladder-less dams. (Actually, Daguerre dam on the Yuba, a small dam designed from our viewpoint as anglers mainly to dewater the lower Yuba to increase its water temperature up to salmon killing temperatures, has a fish ladder, but shad don’t go up it for some reason, and the same goes for the Red Bluff diversion dam.) Shad can also be found in the Russian river, purportedly in the Klamath River system, although I know of no fly anglers who regularly target them there, and into Oregon’s rivers including the Mighty Columbia. The Shad fishing I’m most familiar with is in the Sacramento, Feather, Yuba, and American Rivers. For me these rivers constitute “the Right Spot.”
The righter spots yet would be such places as Road 48, and Princeton on the Sac, Shanghai Bend on the Feather, Daguerre Point or Hallwood on the Yuba, or the Log Hole, the Pink House Hole, and the Rusty Pole Hole on the American. These are all spots of renown among shadders, although the Pink House Hole and the Log Hole aren’t what they used to be. But nothing else is either. Any good shop in any nearby vicinity to these rivers should be able to point you to them. If not then go to another fly shop. There is also a StreamTime map available for each of these rivers, which should be available at the same good and knowledgeable local shops.
The Right Line
The right line to use for shad fishing is a shooting head, or several shooting heads, really. That is unless you don’t enjoy having to deal with unruly and un-detangle-able running lines, clunky knots, and the general pain-in-the-assness of using shooting heads. We can put a man on the moon–or at least we used to be able to–so why can’t we make a decent sinking tip line?Actually, we can and there are several that work really well for shad fishing. Every major fly line company has at least a few sink tip lines that work well for shad fishing. You can’t just have just one, however, unless you only fish for shad in one spot with the river flowing at only one volume.
Regardless of whether you use sink-tip lines or opt for shooting heads (yeccch!) you will want an array of them, or at least three, which may or may not be enough for an array, but which is probably enough to catch shad.
Firstly you will want one line that sinks about like yeah. Your next line should skink about twice as fast as that, and your third should sink even faster yet. Maybe best would be to get a line that sinks slow, one that sinks middlin’, and one that sinks fast. I could say get a type I, a type III, and a type VI, but “types” when referring to sinking lines are totally arbitrary and there is no accepted standard among manufacturers as to what the term “type” refers to, so I will refrain from using that particular nomenclature.
Some shad holes require that you use a type IV line, but using that same line in the next run downstream may not result in you hooking any shad at all. But if you were to use a type II line in that run you might hook a fish on every other cast. Oh ya, remember also that sink-tip lines come with different length sinking parts, so that makes for even more complications in trying to cover the depths at which shad like to take a fly. The point is that having the right line, a line that sinks so as to get your fly consistently in the school of shad’s strike zone, which appears to be a very narrow vertical zone and is also variable depending on conditions, is critical to hooking large numbers of shad, which is the name of the game. If you have trouble deciding which lines work best try a fly shop in a shad area.
The Name of the Game
Which brings us to what shad fishing is really all about. Shad fishing is all about numbers in a way that no other fishing, except maybe dip-netting for surf smelt, or fishing commercially to make a ton of cash, is all about numbers. A good tarpon trip might be made by getting one or two good “eats”; a good spring creek day might be made by that one tough brown trout succumbing to your perfect presentation of your exact imitation of an occularly challenging super dinky mayfly; a good steelhead day might consist of not getting hypothermia; a good shad day seems to require that shad are landed by the bushel. How many shad will fit in a bushel? It’s an experiment that I’ve not yet run, but if a bushel is quantified as the amount necessary to make for a successful afternoon of shadding, then it is about 30…in 1975, that is. Now maybe a good afternoon of shadding is more likely around 10. (I wonder how many passenger pigeons it took to make a good afternoon’s hunting?)
The When-To
My late buddy Dave-0, who was also known locally as Mister Shad, would spend most every afternoon when the cotton from the cottonwood trees was wafting on the late spring evening breeze down on the American River having a shad “session,” as he was wont to call it. I only mention this because it is a nice reminiscence to think of Dave-0 exuberantly bopping down to the old log hole on those late spring evenings, making friends and hooking shad, and also to bring up the subject of when it is that you should go shadding. I’m not talking about the afternoon here, although that is a fine time of day to go shadding, I’m talking about time of year that you should go and that is when the cotton from the cottonwood trees is in the air. To be more literal and understandable, the best time to go shadding is the months of May and June. Those are the best months, but you can also get them in the second half of April and into the first half of July.I also bring up the memory of Dave-0 because he laid claim to being the progenitor of Dave’s Little Wet Pinky, which is probably the best shad fly ever tied. [For more on Dave-0, see Dave Howard Interview, CFF, Fall ’03].
Calling a proven shad fly “the best shad fly” is a bit like calling one particular potato chip out of a whole bag “the best chip in the bag.” That chip may well be the tastiest, but it doesn’t mean that you aren’t going to eat a whole bunch of the other chips too. The same goes for shad and their attitude toward most every shad fly. Dave’s Little Wet Pinky may be the best shad fly, but every other shad fly is a good one too.
Speaking of shad flies, my friend RC tells a story of his young daughter and how she caught a bushel of shad by skittering an elk hair caddis, (more likely an EC caddis), across the surface of the river behind the transom of his anchored boat. His story of shad to the dry isn’t the first that I’ve heard. Over the years I’ve heard from several different fly anglers of shad taking dries. I think that these stories are probably all lies. Most of the stories mention that it happens later in the season rather than earlier, and most mention a black elk hair caddis, and most of these purported occurrences of these obviously falsified accounts took place in the evening. I’m sure that these similarities are just coincidental, in case you were thinking of running an experiment. Shad don’t take dries, so I insist that you never try to catch one that way. But maybe bring a floating line along on your next evening foray for shad just in case.
Etiquette
Speaking of Dave-0, shad fishing for him was at least as social as it was sporting. Dave was one of the sweetest most enthusiastic anglers that ever angled. That made him one of the best anglers in my book, which by the way mentions few other anglers. Although he would almost always catch his 30 shad in any given “session,” no one would have ever called Dave-0 a “shad-hog.” If you were fishing near him he wanted you to catch your 30 also and would try to give you casting or equipment advice, motion for you to move a little closer to his “honey spot,” or even give you a couple of Pinkies from his box,(more likely his pocket), to help you reach that goal. Dave would always try to synchronize his casting to make sure that he didn’t screw up your cast or your swing. Not every one can be a Dave-0, but it is good to remember that good shadding will rarely be a solitary pursuit. There may be a few secret yet fantastic shad spots left out there, but you are unlikely to ever find yourself standing in one. Remember your social graces. Remember not to be greedy. Remember that 65% of fly anglers will not be impressed even if you catch 100 shad in a session.