Shad Season is Upon Us

Shad planking near Washington, D.C., 1893.

Boy with shad on Potomoac, 1920. Colorized print.

It's that time of year -- the forsythia are in bloom, the daffodils are out, and the barest hint of green leaf buds can be seen on the edges of some trees.

That means two things: 1) time to put pre-emergent on the lawn, and; 2) the fish are in the river.   A little less of the former is always good for the later!

The Yellow Perch will have come up river about a month ago, but the Shad and the Stripped Bass will just now be coming up, and the Largemouth Bass will just be starting to bite.

For those who read books (there are still a few of you, yes?), the great writer John McPhee wrote The Founding Fish, which is about shad.  It is not his greatest book (for that I would suggest Encounters with the Archdruid or The Curve of Binding Energy) but it is a very good book and worth the time (a high compliment, for while money comes and goes, time is forever).

There is a season for shad, and season for life and death too, I suppose.  Along that vein, and because I just mentioned McPhee and fishing, you might check out this obituary of Pat Crow written by McPhee. 

Pat Crow, who died last week, liked to fish from Table Rock, in the middle of the Delaware, three hundred river miles above the ocean. With heavy currents high up his chest, he would make his way there without the aid of a wading staff, climb up, stand in water scarcely covering his ankles, and walk around on the rock’s remarkably flat top, where he could be king of the universe, or at least of a river two hundred feet from bank to bank. From his red head to his wading shoes, he was every inch a king, and around the middle as well. Among many reasons he liked the rock was that it weighed more than he did. It weighed a hundred and fifty tons.

• Related Posts:
  ** A Time for Shad
  .