Tag: Shad

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Shad, Brandywine Creek, Delaware, May 25, 2023.

We were in Delaware last Thursday to try again to catch American shad. We fished in Brandywine Creek in Brandywine Park, only a mile or so from downtown Wilmington, with two-handed rods, long 11-foot rods that don’t require a backcast. Shad are anadromous fish, just like Atlantic and Pacific salmon, only not so glamorous. From northern Florida to southern Canada, in rivers all along the East Coast, American shad migrate into freshwater rivers and streams to spawn. Each spring in Delaware the shad run into the Brandywine from the Atlantic. Unlike Pacific salmon, American shad don’t necessarily die after spawning, and most will return to saltwater. They’re not as big as spawning salmon, but in the Brandywine a hen might reach eight pounds.

At least according to those who know they are great fun to catch. I’m assured that there are those who know.

In the ocean shad are planktivorous, which is an extravagant way to say that they live on plankton with a smattering of insects and tiny fish and crustaceans. Like salmon, when shad reach freshwater what they eat doesn’t matter. They stop eating. They will take a fly, maybe out of anger, maybe habit, or maybe just to show off. Who knows? But they will take a fly.

At least I’ve heard they’ll take a fly. This is a spoiler. We didn’t catch shad again.

You know what though? We toss the dice every time we go someplace to fish. There’s always a chance we may not catch fish. That’s ok. With Delaware shad we’ve tried to hit a window when the fish are in the creek. Last time we went, in May 2021, it was still too cold, and the shad stayed out of the creek in deeper water. This spring Wilmington hasn’t had significant rain. Unlike salmon, shad don’t jump obstacles, and when the water’s low the remains of the first Brandywine dam block the shad. Last year when we didn’t go the migration was reportedly great, and someday soon the Wilmington forecast is for rain . . . . Last year. . . . Someday . . . . We can’t control this year, this week. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

There are now lots of states, Maryland, Florida, Kansas, Hawaii, Delaware, where we’ve gone back to catch fish. Next month we’ll make our third trip to Rhode Island, and not because the fish weren’t there. Rhode Island is purely user error. Some day we have to go back to North Dakota, but then who doesn’t want to go back to North Dakota?

What I’ve learned is that every time I go back to a place, there’s something I like more about it, there’s something more to be discovered, and there are always other things I wish I had seen, or done, or eaten, or fished for. There are plenty of places where I secretly half wish I hadn’t caught a fish, just so I’d have an excuse to return.

And this time I really enjoyed going back to Delaware. I liked fishing for shad again, even if I didn’t catch one. Standing in a river practicing my spey cast makes a pretty good day, with or without fish, and we were standing in the middle of Brandywine Park, a park designed in consultation with Frederick Law Olmstead. I would cast my line across the current, trying to remember to quarter down river about 45 degrees, then watch the line arc across where the shad should be. Half the time I’d make my cast, then spend the drift watching joggers and picnickers and dog walkers, or a group of adolescents up to minor mischief, or a man throwing sticks to a dog. It is a lovely place, and it was a joy to watch people take joy from it.

And good guides bring such knowledge to the table. When I called Terry Peach a few weeks ago to set up our day, it was like talking to an old friend. He remembered us from two years ago. He was happy to guide us again, and when we fished last Thursday Kris and I talked to Terry about most everything open to polite conversation, and only 90% or so of our conversation was about fishing. Before we left Houston, Terry called me twice to warn us about the low water flows, and talked us into moving our trip around so that we could fish in the evening.

Terry didn’t sound too hopeful, but he thought our best shot would be after the Atlantic tide pushed the lower Brandywine up two or three feet, and that maybe that push would be enough to get the fish upriver. That evening it wasn’t enough, but it was our best shot at shad.

I did catch one fish in the Brandywine, a small yellow perch, 8 or 9 inches. I don’t know much about perch. I’ve caught one other, in Connecticut, but apparently the Delaware perch spawn happens earlier, in March, and according to Terry it’s a big favorite for local fly fishers. While the fish are small, there’s a mass of ’em, and they’re aggressive. Finding my perch in the creek so late in the season was peculiar, and I was too surprised to take a picture. It was pretty though, bright yellow, with dark vertical bands.

File:Yellow perch fish perca flavescens.jpg

Raver, Duane, Yellow Perch, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2016, public domain.

That yellow perch was enough to check off Delaware, but Terry had already taken care of that earlier in the day. Suburban Delaware may be one of the gentlest, prettiest places on earth. It’s pretty like Kentucky horse country, or the Connecticut second home region in full summer spate. It’s not wild, it’s in no manner rugged, it’s domestic and fat and happy. If you lived there you’d have to belong to a country club. You’d have to own a 1968 Chrysler Town and Country station wagon, or at least a Defender. You really wouldn’t be surprised to discover a mess of Hobbits living down by the Brandywine.

At the heart of suburban Delaware is the DuPont family, who began manufacturing gunpowder at a site on the Brandywine in 1804. There are numerous DuPont and DuPont kinfolk estates scattered here and about, with Winterthur being perhaps the most famous. Across the road from Winterthur is another passel of DuPont heirs–I never did get quite straight who or how they were all related. However they fit in, Terry had permission to take us there to fish their ponds, and before we went to Brandywine Creek we stopped off at a DuPont pond.

There are all sorts of exotic fly fishing destinations in the world, and all sorts of exotic fish, and for all of them I’m at best nothing but a duffer. Give me a pond, though, and I know how to fish. I may be one of the world’s premier bluegill fly anglers.

And during our hour or so on the pond we caught fish. We were fishing 6-weight single-handed rods with floating lines and various surface bass flies: poppers, sliders, gurglers . . . . Kris caught a crappie and a nice bass, maybe two pounds, or at least it might have been two pounds pre-spawn, and I caught a couple of crappie and a bluegill. Crappie, pronounced crop-ee, are what my parents loved to fish for, and the first fish I ever caught was almost certainly a crappie. Fishing a bass pond on a DuPont estate and catching crappie, I couldn’t have been happier. I may not have caught a shad, but I caught a crappie. I’m one of the world’s premier crappie fly anglers.

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Delaware Deuce

I wrote about Delaware last March, because we’d planned a trip in May 2020 for the shad run. Who can forget May 2020? I also wrote about shad, which was why we were going to Delaware. When I wrote about Delaware, I wrote about how small and densely populated it is, and about how being first settled by Swedes gave me an excuse to post gratuitous photos of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman.

Gratuitous photo of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman, from Ingmar Bergman’s Persona

Photos of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman are never amiss.

For most of us, shad are not generally as attractive as Swedish actresses, but they are consistent. They run in the spring. Last year when we talked to Terry Peach at A Marblehead Flyfisher, he said you could usually time the Delaware shad run within a two-week collar surrounding Mother’s Day. Shad actually run all along the East Coast, not just in the colder climes, and they’ll run earlier in Florida than Delaware because of warmer water. We recently had dinner with our friends Deborah and Byron, and Deborah asked if I’d ever tried to bone a shad? Even South Carolina girls know the near impossibility of successfully boning shad. Texas boys do not, except as it’s told to us.

We didn’t make our planned trip last year because the Pandemic interfered. When I called Terry to tell him we weren’t coming, I thought he was disappointed in us–that’s what I inferred anyway–and for a year I’ve felt guilty about calling off that trip. Apparently I was imagining things, because he shut down guiding operations too. He’s guiding again, and he seemed happy to hear from me. Nice guy, and a great conversationalist.

Last year there were several things I meant to write about but never got around to. I have never been to Delaware, but Kris has. Kris practiced bankruptcy law, and one of our national peculiarities is that if you’re an American corporation, and haven’t yet moved your headquarters to the Lesser Antilles, you are likely incorporated in Delaware. Delaware figured out early that reducing burdens on corporations was a better long-term business plan than manufacturing steel, and more than 50 percent of publicly traded American corporations are incorporated in Delaware. Corporations are Delaware’s principal cash crop, and that’s probably why if you visit A Marblehead Flyfisher you pay no sales tax on your purchases.

Another principal (and related) Delaware crop is corporate bankruptcies. Usually it’s the debtor who files for bankruptcy, and it can choose where it files as long as it’s got some nexus with the venue. The Delaware bankruptcy courts are debtor friendly. Since corporate debtors are often incorporated in Delaware, or do business with a Delaware creditor, they choose to file in those warm and welcoming courts. I’d bet most corporate bankruptcy lawyers have visited Wilmington, and that it has nothing to do with the shad run.

For the Trump corporate bankruptcies, Mr. Trump apparently preferred the bankruptcy courts of New Jersey to Delaware. We’re not going to New Jersey, so I’ll post no gratuitous photos of President Trump.

Gratuitous photo of Donald J. Trump, 46th President, The White House website. I couldn’t find any record of Donald J. Trump filing a corporate bankruptcy in Delaware. The three I could trace were filed in New Jersey.

Ok, I lied.

The second thing I meant to write about was crime. Fishing in Wilmington is urban fishing. I’ve done some urban fishing, mostly near our house on Braes Bayou, and even in safe neighborhoods it’s a relatively creepy thing to do–it’s not a dissimilar feeling from fishing in bear country. The first advice I remember reading about Wilmington urban fishing was this:

Be careful where you park your car.

Terry Peach says that we’ll fish in a Wilmington park, and that it doesn’t look all that urban. Still, Wilmington is, apparently, a sketchy urban environment, and not just because of all those corporate lawyers. NeighborhoodScout publishes a list of America’s 100 most dangerous cities, and they rank Wilmington 7th. One in 19 Wilmingtonians (Wilmingtoneers?) has been the victim of property crime. One in 62 Wilmingtonistas has been the victim of violent crime. It’s no wonder that the novel Fight Club was set in Wilmington. I’ve read Fight Club by the way, and after reading it I couldn’t bring myself to watch the movie. There’s no reason to beat up on myself.

As a comparison, Houston ranks 43rd in the list of dangerous cities, but by then it’s sharing rankings with cities like Wichita, Kansas, and Muskogee, Oklahoma. They don’t even smoke marijuana in Muskogee. At seventh, Wilmington ranks in the same tier as Detroit and Baltimore. I love Baltimore, but it’s a different level of sketchy from Muskogee.

Gratuitous photo of Merle Haggard at the White House for the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors, federal government photo, public domain. Mr. Haggard was never President, though I might well have voted for him. Of course I might also have voted for Liv Ullman.

Finally, since I wrote last March, a Wilmingtonite was elected President. I guess when I wrote then it hadn’t yet registered with me that Mr. Biden would be the Democratic nominee, though the South Carolina primary was a few weeks before I posted. I’ve been surprised by President Biden. He’s acted with dignity, consistency, and reserve. I know that kind of presidential misbehavior isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and that there are some who will miss the last four year’s hijinks, but so far I haven’t missed daily trash fires at the White House.

When I asked Terry about President Biden, he said that he, Terry, doesn’t really talk politics, but that everybody in Wilmington knows Joe, and that it’s a good family. I love that compliment. Terry was so genuine, and it’s the kind of compliment you’d pay a small town neighbor, that whatever their issues, they’re good people. Terry did say that now whenever President Biden comes home his entourage ties up traffic. I would attest that when George H. W. Bush returned to Houston, the same thing happened here in Houston, but tied-up traffic is just a given for us, presidential entourage or no. How would we have been able to tell?

Joe Biden, 47th President, The White House.

President Biden carried 58% of the vote in Delaware in 2020, though the Delaware county furthest south, Sussex, voted 55% for former-President Trump. President Biden must not spend enough time down South, though he did reach Georgia.

From Wikipedia

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American Shad (Alosa sapidissima)

Hugh M. Smith, Shad (Alosa sapidissima), Fishes of North Carolina, Plate 5, North Carolina Geological and Economic Survey, Vol II, E.M. Uzzell & Co., 1907, Raleigh, N.C., Freshwater and Marine Image Bank, University of Washington.

Like the glamorous salmon, American Shad are anadromous–when shad spawn they migrate from salt water back to their natal river. Unlike the glamorous salmon, American shad are potbellied algae eaters. To my eye they are decidedly unglamorous, but shad anglers are devoted. There is a fine blog dedicated to fly fishing for shad, Shad on the Fly, and plenty of other information on the web, and of course John McPhee, our greatest nonfiction writer, wrote The Founding Fish because of his devotion to shad on the fly rod. Shad on the fly is a thing. Maybe not the biggest thing, maybe it doesn’t rival tarpon or steelhead or bluegill, but it’s at least as much of a thing as standing on a ladder in Pyramid Lake for Lahontan cutthroat.

Have you ever seen a picture of John McPhee? I’d read plenty of McPhee, off and on, and will certainly read more, but I don’t know that I’d ever seen his picture. I hold him in such esteem that I kinda expected Paul Newman, or maybe James Stewart.

John McPhee. From http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/media/resources/pictures.xml. I stole this from Wikipedia, which stole it from Princeton, which seems to say if you aren’t using the photo for commercial purposes you can steal their photos. Hope so.

That picture actually makes me happy. McPhee, notwithstanding his Princeton and Oxford education, his professorship at Princeton, his Pulitzer, and more than anything his lifetime’s worth of essential writing about the natural world, looks a lot less like Paul Newman than a guy who fishes for shad. That’s satisfying.

Unlike Pacific salmon, American shad can return to the Atlantic after spawning, and in northern climes can spawn and return for several seasons. Their US Atlantic range, and the range of their smaller also-fishable cousin, the hickory shad, covers much of the East Coast, from the St. John’s River in Florida to Maine. There are also shad in the Pacific Northwest, imported by that other cross-country migrant, Americans. They are fished commercially in both the Atlantic and Pacific, but it’s in rivers that they are a sport fish.

Photo of a Plankton Fly, Robert Rauschenburg, White Painting, 1951, Robert Rauschenburg Foundation, https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/series/white-painting.

Why shad bite is kind of a mystery, though it’s likely either territorial aggression or sexual frustration. Shad are mostly filter feeders, planktivores, so they aren’t a traditional fly fishing target. The photo of my favorite plankton fly has a lot in common with Robert Rauscheburg’s white paintings. It’s an easy fly to tie, but hard to fish. It’s not clear that shad feed at all in freshwater, but in saltwater they also feed on small shrimp and fish, so shad flies tend to remind me of bonefish flies, which usually imitate small shrimp or fish.

In Colonial America shad were so common on the East Coast that they were a major component of the Colonial springtime diet. They were generally thought delicious:

The Shad is held in greater estimation by the epicure than by the angler. When properly in season, it is considered by many the most delicious fish that can be eaten. Fresh Salmon, or a Spanish Mackerel, or a Pompano may possibly equal it; but who can forget the delicate flavor and juicy sweetness of a fresh Shad, broiled or ‘planked;’ hot from the fire; opened, salted and peppered, and spread lightly with fresh May butter.

Norris, Thad, The American Angler’s Book, 171, E.H. Butler & Co., Philadelphia, 1864.
Map of US American Shad Distribution, USGS

Apparently they are also extraordinarily, difficultly, perversely bony, and nothing short of uncommon skill or nuclear annihilation can handle the bones. The current literature suggests that they may have been less the Founding Fathers’ favorite fish than, salted and preserved in barrels for year-round consumption, the Founding Fathers’ slaves’ necessary fish. It’s probably some of both, but in any case shad consumption has fallen out of favor.

The hen’s roe is also eaten. I can find, for instance, relatively recent shad roe and bacon recipes online from Food and Wine, Martha Stewart, and the New York Times. Martha Stewart has a video, and watching Martha separating a shad roe sack is . . . memorable, and creepy. The roe is usually prepared wrapped in bacon, so one wonders whether the appeal is the roe or the bacon. Everything’s better with bacon. Since we will theoretically be in the shad’s territory during the run, I’ll try to find someplace to eat shad, though I’m not sure Kris is convinced, and I’m squeamish about the roe. In 1864, Thad Norris (whose quote about the most-excellent deliciousness of shad appears above) said nothing about eating the roe, but reported that it makes good bait.

Shad’s population decline probably explains shad’s eating decline as much as anything. Damn, Dams. Shad declined not from over-fishing, not sport fishing, not climate change, but dams. If all goes well we will fish the Brandywine in Wilmington, near Bullroarer Took’s old place, and until 2019 the Brandywine dams had stopped much of the Creek’s shad run for more than a century. In 2019 the 115-year old Brandywine Creek dam, first in line from the Christina River and ultimately the Atlantic, was breached in Wilmington. That should help, but the City Dam, a mile further along, is next in line. Wilmington depends on the City Dam for its water supply, so it’s not going away. There’s discussion of ladders, and of rock ramps, but apparently nothing is happening. Imagine building a dam today without provision for fish migration? Even upstream beyond City Dam there are eight additional dams on the Brandywine, some dating back 200 years. There’s not much call for water-powered gristmills in these late days, but demand is apparently enough to stop the shad migration.

Brandywine Creek, Wilmington, Delaware near Tookville, Google Middle Earth.

* * *

Yesterday I fished for largemouth for the first time this year. It was windy, as windy as I can remember fishing, but for whatever reason it didn’t bother me. I fished an olive pine squirrel leach, cast across a back channel at Damon’s Seven Lakes, and caught four bass, three small, one about two pounds. They were pretty; dark and fat, ready for the spring spawn. Kris fished for a few minutes, but then got her binoculars out of the car and looked for birds. She said there were coots, but I didn’t take it personally.

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Delaware

Aaron Arrowsmith and Samuel Lewis, Arrowsmith’s 1804 Map of Delaware, 1804.

Delaware has a population of less than 1 million people, but at only 1,982 square miles, it has 469 people per square mile. That’s a lot. It is the sixth densest state. Montana, which has a few more people, has only seven people per square mile. Standing in your mile of Delaware you can rub elbows with 462 people you’d never meet in Montana.

All of the states denser than Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maryland, are its neighbors. There are other states with more people, but crammed into that northeast corridor are the densest states with the most people and the least land per person. One doesn’t choose Delaware for a wilderness experience.

Delaware ranks 49th in total area–I suppose Rhode Island must be last. There are three counties in Delaware, New Castle, Kent, and Sussex. That’s it. Its largest city, Wilmington, is in the far north, with over half the state’s population and a population density of 1,312 people per square mile. Blacks make up 23% of Delaware’s population, whites 69.5%, Asians 4.1%, and everybody else the rest. About 8% of the whites are Hispanic.

Delaware is not a poor state. Its median annual income per household ranks 17th, at $64,805. Wealth though is tied to race. In Wilmington the median annual white household income is $60,772. The black median annual household income is about $47,500.

From Wikimedia Commons, User Golbez, Map of the Slave States 1861.

On December 7, 1787, Delaware, then a slave state, was the first state to ratify the Constitution. In 1790 in Delaware there were 8,887 slaves, and 3,899 free blacks. The 1860 census listed only 1,798 slaves, of a total black population of 21,677, of a total Delaware population of 112,266. Delaware had not freed its slaves when the Civil War began, though attempts had been made in its legislature and there was a strong abolition movement in the state. Its slaves were finally freed when the 13th Amendment ending slavery was ratified in 1865, after the Civil War.

Gratuitous Photograph of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman, from Ingmar Bergman’s Persona.

How did slavery get to Delaware? The Dutch of course. Delaware was originally a Swedish colony, founded in 1636. Just think what we’d have gained if the Swedes had held on. We’d own Volvos. We’d have an excuse to post gratuitous photographs of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman. We’d all be tall and blonde. The Dutch (who still controlled New York) kicked out the Swedes in 1655. The Dutch thought African slavery was the very thing, and had already established slavery in what would be New York, which finally outlawed slavery in the 1820s.

The Dutch conquered the New World Swedes in 1655, and were in turn conquered by the English in 1664. There was some fussing over whether Delaware belonged to Lord Baltimore as part of Maryland, or the Duke of York who deeded it to William Penn, but ultimately it went to Penn. The Delawarians and the Pennsylvanians weren’t well-suited for a long-term relationship, and by 1701 Penn had agreed to a separation, though they continued to share a governor.

Contemporary Portrait, Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr 1577-1618. Baron De La Warr was English, not Native American.

A good name like Delaware should be Native American, but no. The Delaware Native Americans were the Leni Lenape, part of the Algonquins, and were also located in New Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania. They apparently didn’t observe state lines. By 1670 the Lenape were mostly gone, absorbed, killed by disease or otherwise, or pushed west. The Tribes of the Delaware Nation are now in Oklahoma. There were also Nanticoke people, who either moved west with the Lenape or north to Canada, but some remained in Delaware, and settled near the Indian River. The Nanticoke Indian Association is recognized as a nonprofit corporation by the state, which likes nothing better than a good corporation.

The Delaware Tribe in Oklahoma sports the same name as the state, the river, and the bay, and all of ’em were named for the first governor of Virginia, Thomas West, the Third Baron De La Warr. Delaware Indians must possess a finely honed sense of irony.

Physically Delaware is flat, coastal, and temperate. It has about 45 inches of rain a year, with average temperatures ranging from 76 degrees in summer to 32 degrees in winter, with winter temperatures along the Atlantic Coast averaging 10 degrees warmer in winter and l0 degrees cooler in summer.

Delaware Geological Survey.

Delaware is the 6th flattest state, one flatter than Kansas. The highest point in the state, the Ebright Azimuth, is 447.85 feet above sea level, or at least it was before the seas started rising. I guess now either all things are relative or the point from which we measure sea level is underwater..

Delawarians tend to vote Democratic, it is Joe Biden’s state and both senators and its congresswoman are Democratic, but even in Delaware there is a rural/urban divide. In 2016 the more urban New Castle County voted for Clinton; the less populous southern counties voted for President Trump. Like I said, all things are relative. It’s not like Sussex County’s 165 people per square mile qualifies as ranch land.

We were going to lump our trip to Delaware together with our trip to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but getting ready we both read John McPhee’s The Founding Fish, which is McPhee’s paean to shad. Terry Peach at A Marblehead Flyfisher said that the shad most reliably run in the Brandywine River for the two weeks surrounding Mother’s Day, this year May 10, so now we’re going May 17. After all, who wouldn’t want to fish the Brandywine? Of course it doesn’t run through Hobbiton until somewhat further north than where we’re fishing. We’ll probably manage two breakfasts anyway.

Shad. If everything works we’re going to fish for shad.