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- Apr 5, 2011
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On a Spring Saturday morning in Arlington VA in the late '60s I got a call from my fishing buddy, Dr. Bill. "Let's go fishing. The yellow perch are running over in Maryland."
It would be a rare thing for me to decline such an invitation and this was not one of those rare things. I had my tackle ready when he pulled up at my walk.
We drove over into rural Maryland to a creek that I don't remember the name of. On the way Bill regaled me with tales another Dentist had told him of collecting a fine string of jumbo perch at this very creek just "last week".
The perch were gone. In an hour we landed two small white perch and a very small striped bass.
If there was anything that Dr. Bill loved almost as much as fishing it was telling exaggerated stories. I wondered if this was one of his tales, but he seemed as disappointed as me. Disappointed, yes, but discouraged? Not Dr. Bill. One of the things Dr. Bill shared with my other favorite fishing companions was an indestructible optimism.
"What about Shenandoah?" he asked. That was an awful long drive, but you must remember that gas was around $0.27 a gallon in those days and Bill would drive 200 miles in a heartbeat for good fishing. I didn't want to go that far on that day.
"Well, Fredericksburg is just across the river. I have heard that there is a good run of white shad and herring in the Rappahannock. Maybe we can find a good spot near the power station." I had never fished for shad, so I agreed.
As we pulled up near the power station cars lined the road for a quarter mile. We walked down the slope to the tailrace from the station. The banks were lined with fishermen and many stood in water up to their waists. I thought something must be happening here.
That thought was interrupted by a bolt of silver shooting several feet out of the water, scattering drops like a fountain. The fish was about 30" long and as silver as a tarpon. It turned and twisted so that the sun reflecting off its silver sides glittered like fireworks.
"SHAZAM! I thought. I want some of that. How do I get it?"
It was too crowded along the shore to use my fly rod. I had a Zebco 33 combo, so that seemed to be what I would have to use, but what bait? Careful observation revealed that the other fishermen were using small, single hook silver spoons and a type of weighted hair jig they told me was called a shad dart. A walk back up the bank with Bill to a mobile tackle store provided me with a variety of darts and spoons. I was soon rigged and found a gap in the crowd along the shore and tossed a spoon into the fast flowing tailrace.
BANG. It was not a jerk on my line; it was a bang, followed by a strong run across the current. Then the fish jumped. That fish thought it could fly. Oh, my! What a thrill.
In what seemed like just a few minutes Bill and I each had several shad on our stringers and started releasing new captives. By sundown we had lost most of our lures, so we packed up and drove home.
I gutted and scaled the four 3-5lb fish I had kept and turned them over to the Love of My Life. I thought they would be awfully bony, but she assured me that she could deal with that. She put one in a covered baking dish with a brew of herbs and baked it at very low temperature (170f) for four hours. The bones melted. The result tasted a lot like sardines (I really like sardines). Shad are related to sardines, and to tarpon. Nice genes.
I went back to Fredericksburg several more times when Dr. Bill (also Major Bill, U.S. Army) was not available. Then the run ended and I have never had another chance to catch white shad. It is still one of my favorite fishing memories.
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JB Cornwell writes from "The Hideout" in Whitt, TX, and is also an expert moderator, instructor, and fountain-of-knowledge in the iboats.com Boating Forums, where he may occasionally share a yarn of his own.