Pregnant shads
There comes a point every winter now when my daily routine of driving over the James River becomes an exercise in patience. This is not my lot in life, so a bubble of anticipation - frustration, really - begins to build around January. I know that the procreative urge that brings in shad by the droves will be upon us sometime soon, never certain of exactly when because it’s entirely weather-dependent. It’s no surprise that this past winter has been exceedingly unpleasant, making the arrival of our oily anadromous friends all the more poignant.
A couple weeks ago there was a unique window of angling opportunity locally. The river was in prime shape, dropping and warming. It had an appealing greenish brownness that heralded the onslaught of shad, which kindled in me a desire to tie shad flies for the upcoming run. To my surprise I actually made it to the river inside the small window of angling opportunity and caught a shad or three before a slug of cold, dirty water came down from west of the mountains and blew it out for a solid week.
This is the ebb and flow of fishing a big river with a huge catchment: rain 4 hours away can wreck the river locally within a few days. But the water came back down. And with a week of 80-90 degree weather, it warmed up, too. So did the fishin. I can say with certainty that the hickory shad are here in great numbers, with the fishing improving daily, and my spey casting skills not lagging too far behind. Though I was taught a good lesson today about skagit casting: keeping the anchor far enough away from me to avoid burying a hook in my limbs. I’ll say no more.
Some photos of the spots, the fish, Dan Dan the shad wreckin man and the holes that a size 4 hook leaves in a dude’s arm.
