SHAD FISHING ?

[Bang]

Shad is good eating. It's a pita to eat because it is quite boney. I'd eaten shad roe and fried eggs since a small kid. Loved it. Problem with roe is it is different depending on the stage of development. Too early, not good. Too late, not good.

Shad fishing from a small boat in the upper (non-tidal) Delaware, you have to locate the channel they are swimming. It can be only 5 feet wide. Theory is they do not eat, they strike the flutter spoon or lure because they are batting it aside out of annoyance. I have a hard time buying that one. They expend a lot of energy swimming against the current. That takes fuel. They do not have the look of an animal that has survived on its body fat.

Living in Lower Bucks, I eventually discovered the boat thing was too damned much work when you can do much better at the Trenton power plant, where shad swim in for a rest and swim out and you can cast to them from terra ferma.

[cjcullom]

Lots of bones in shad! If you packem in salted layers in a 5 gallon bucket they are tasty. Salt herring without the herring....and the salt takes care of the bones. They ran the North Anna River so thick I could catch them by dipping a bucket in the river and pulling it up full.....filled a truck bed one time in about 30 minutes.

[ungawa]

Use a sinker and a shad dart. Find a deep spot near shallow water. You would probably do better a little further south, perhaps near the overwash at Newtown. But I don't know the schedule this yea because I am not fishing

There are several shad fishing websites that include observations of movement. Here is one.

http://drsfa.org/

I have filleted them but they are bony and that wastes some meat.