Cold Front Bites

 

    Cold front lock-jaw is real. When high pressure fronts bring in bluebird skies and cold, heavy winds, fish seem to just shut down and stop feeding. You can still catch them, but the methods often have to be very finesse. For bass guys, these are drop shot conditions. However, in my home river, the shad that run up every spring don't eat. Instead, they merely smack flutterspoons and shad darts out of pure aggression, snapping at something shiny and bright that comes across their face and aggravates them. So on a day with these conditions in early April, I opted to shad fish. 

    Arriving at my spot, the first thing that I noticed was how the wind was ripping. Heavy gusts from the North was stirring up the water, creating ripples all across the surface. I wasn't sure if I could present a dart through the current properly given the conditions. My concerns were immediately dispelled when a nice roe grabbed my dart on the third swing. 

    For the next hour, I had a steady pick of shad on darts. What's interesting is that I was using a double dart rig, with one chartreuse and one orange, and very single fish hit the orange. There's a big debate amongst fisherman on whether lure or fly color matters. Generally, I don't think it does in most circumstances, but with fish that rely so heavily on seeing what you're presenting, I'm not so sure.

    I managed to pull a half-dozen of them from one current seam before the bite died. Shad bites come in waves, and I managed run into one immediately before it eventually petered out as the fish all came through the run, making a mad dash for the next current break where they could rest. After the bite died, I got a text from my friend and biggest shad fan I know, Ernie, saying he was at a spot further south. I met him there, and he proceeded to school me, pulling three nice fish out of a run in a short amount of time while all I got was one buck that spat the hook. 

    Quickly after that however, the bite shut down there too. We headed even further south to find some more willing fish, but the shad seemed to be done for the day. We did, however, catch a mess of largemouth and crappies from a back creek on small swimbaits and trout jigs. 

    The cobra-chickens are nesting, the hydrilla is forming, and the tree frogs are a' croaking. It's spring now folks, and it's shaping up to be a good one. Get out there and fish, folks. 

Cheers, fishy people. 

The March of the Founding Fish

 

    Coastal rivers have a special magic that courses through them. Something about flowing freshwater with a connection to the ocean brings a certain mystique, a quality that is hard to put into words and even harder to figure out on the water. They'll always throw you a curveball. Often times, coastal rivers will have a certain time of year when something is different, where a biological clock overtakes the survival instincts of ocean going fish and pulls an invisible thread that compels them upstream. In the Delaware, that time of year is the spring. 

    American Shad are true natives. Accounts from Amerindian tribes along the East Coast from the St. Johns River in Florida to the Connecticut River in New England tell about how the rivers would turn into churning masses of black and silver every spring as millions of shad tried to get up to spawn. A miraculous early run of American Shad saved General George Washington's troops from starvation at Valley Forge and enabled them to continue fighting in the Revolution, earning them the moniker, The Founding Fish. Every spring, dating back to before measurable time and language, shad brought millions of pounds of biomass from the Atlantic Ocean hundreds of miles upstream, where they would engage in their ancient primordial spawning rituals before dying and returning what they took from the ground, feeding the birds, racoons, foxes, and bears and nourishing the landscape. And every year, river rats like me look forward to the shad run where we can put the walleye gear aside after a long winter and kick off the spring season. 

    The reports trickle in slowly, like a summertime spillway. They start with rumors in the tidal section, hearsay over the tackle shop counters that a few sharpies picked off some bucks (male shad, smaller and skinnier). Maybe one or two even caught some roes (female shad, much bigger and fat with eggs). Then they enter the non-tidal waters. Soon, more and more guys start catching shad. This is when you say, fuck the reports, I'm finding my own fish. Usually, the first few shad trips are ghost hunts, swinging darts through old revisited riffles trying to figure out if they're here yet. It was on Friday, the last day of March, when I finally found them. 

    I pulled up to a familiar spot that I'd fished the previous year and a little bit during walleye season. There were silver and lavender scales on the rocks. I began swinging, and after a few minutes, I feel a thump. Setting the hook, I feel a few headshakes and then it goes slack, ending as quick as it began. They were here. I get set up again and this time, when I connected, I wasn't going to lose this fish. It turned broadside into the current and ran, ripping drag. I managed to turn her and slowly ease her in, yet each time she got near the net she bolted. Shad are fantastic fighters and can use the current to their advantage better than any other fish. Soon, I got her in the net, a 3 lb roe that was my first of the season. 

    Soon after that, I caught one more and lost a few fish before I had to leave. However, the very next morning, I was back. This time, the April showers were in full force. When I arrived, it was a torrential down-pour. Standing in the riffle, swinging darts and small curly tail jigs, were two guys I met earlier this winter fishing beating the banks for walleyes. After some greetings and sharing of info, I slid in next to them and began fishing. Soon, I picked off two more shad, a small buck and a bigger roe on the double-dart rig. 

    Shad bites often come in waves. These fish are moving from pool to pool, controlled by a one-track mind that carries them up river. In between, they rest in staging areas, eddies with deep water and a break along heavy sets of rapids. The spring rains must have carried a school through, breathing new life into the river. A juvenile bald eagle flew overhead as we were shad fishing, carrying on a tradition that sustained colonists and Native tribes for hundreds, likely thousands of years. I've never felt more American. 

Cheers, fishy people. 

 

    

Waiting...

 

    The clock's ticking. The cherry trees are in bloom, the daffodils have emerged, and last night, I heard my first tree frogs of the year. Yet, the river has been hovering right under the magical water temp of 50 degrees. Slowly, painfully, creeping upwards before a cold snap plummets it back down. I'm logging into social media to see pictures of shad starting to be caught from the river and am immediately hit with a sense of FOMO, thinking to myself, It's happening, I gotta get down there, I gotta get down there, before realizing I had just gotten back from spending hours freezing my ass off swinging shad darts and flutter spoons through riffles that once turned silver every spring from shad with narry a hit. 

     Walleye bite's been decent lately though. Once the sun goes down the gravel lizards are usually willing to hit a jerkbait or swimbait. I can't even begin to count the number of hours I've spent this winter, how many cold nights I've passed standing along the bank until the cold makes the atoms of my hands indistinguishable from that of the cork rod handle, anticipating that signature walleye thump that often times never came. But then came February. With February came the pre-spawn, that time where once clever marble-eyes were suddenly overtaken by their biological clock, the one that no concrete hatchery race-way could take away, the one that said, We need to spawn soon. It's time to start killing and eating stuff, and goddamit they got straight up stupid on some occasions. I doubt I'll ever be a walleye guy like they make 'em in states like Minnesota or Wisconsin, but I've gained a lot of respect for the fish and what it takes to dial that fishery in. 

    The other night, to try to save the failed shad expedition, I tied on an x rap and begin working a deep hole. Didn't need to wait too long for the thump. Beautiful 19 incher destined for the fryer, right around magic hour sunset.

    Earlier today, I had some time to fish while there was still daylight out. Probably going against my better judgement, I ran down the river looking for Jersey Tarpon, The Founding Fish themselves, American shad. When I arrived, the water was clear and clean and raging, shouting, stretching, squeezing, carving itself in a gap between the concrete jetties where a set of rapids lay. I stood at the end, where a little plunge pool provided a slow moving back eddy to the adjacent raging torrent. Looking down, I saw a small buck shad slowly work it's way into the pool, resting, circling a few times, before making another push back into the rapids and start heading upstream, being guided by an invisible line that guided thousands of generations of his ancestors before him back to the place where he will spawn and die and float back down the river and return to the Earth, beginning the cycle anew. They were here. 

    I casted out a small flutter spoon, letting the current spin and wiggle it along the current seam. No bites. At one point, I bumped something and pulled back, two silvery scales along the point of the hook. With the water temps still in the mid-40's, the fish weren't in the mood to bite. I resigned myself to watching the plunge pool, observing shad after shad swim in to rest on it's upstream journey. I'll wish them good luck. Until then, I'll keep waiting. 

Cheers, fishy people.