American Shad

Shad in the Bellows Falls viewing room. Photo provided

REGION – Many areas in this country have iconic species that add richness to the sense of place, but dams built in Connecticut and Massachusetts in the 1700s exterminated our iconic species, the American shad and the Atlantic salmon, from the upper valley. For all the disappointment over the failure of the salmon restoration program, the American shad has benefited from work done by the Connecticut River Atlantic Salmon Commission (CRASC), including the addition of fish passage facilities at the dams from Holyoke, Mass., upriver to Wilder, Vt.

Unlike salmon, shad have prospered under the CRASC restoration program, and their annual run is underway in the main river right now. Their recovery has made them our iconic fish species again here in the Connecticut River watershed, with over 500,000 fish crossing the Holyoke Dam In 2017 on their way upriver, with slightly lower annual numbers since.

Historically, Native Americans harvested shad during the spring spawning run, teaching colonists how to catch shad to feed their own families. History has credited dried shad with saving George Washington’s troops from starvation as they camped along the Schuylkill River at Valley Forge. By the early 1800s, anglers in the lower river caught shad by the ton. Farmers took advantage of this seeming endless supply, using shad as fertilizer for their fields.

American shad are an anadromous fish, hence they spend most of their lives in salt water, but return to fresh water to spawn. Shad habitat extends along the Atlantic seaboard from Labrador to Florida. Shad are an important food source for other saltwater fish, such as bluefish and striped bass, and young of the year fish in the Connecticut River feed our bass and other game species in the main river.

As adults, they travel in large schools along ocean coastal areas for four or five years, until they are sexually mature, and then run up large rivers from salt water to fresh water to spawn. During an average life span of five years at sea, the American shad may migrate more than 12,000 miles.

Over 30% of the shad live to spawn two or more years here in our watershed, and after spawning, surviving adults return to the ocean. Newly hatched young remain in fresh water until fall; in the fall, they move downstream to brackish estuaries, where they may remain for a year or more before moving out to the ocean.

Like other herring, the American shad is primarily a plankton feeder, but will eat small shrimp and fish eggs. Occasionally they eat small fish, but these are only a minor item in their general diet. American shad are typically 20-24 inches in length. They can spawn multiple times and live to ten years of age. The longest-lived shad, caught and assessed in Maryland, was 11 years of age.

Although native only to the east coast, American shad are no longer just an east coast fish. Seth Green transplanted shad to California by train in 1871 in milk buckets. He emptied the fish in the Sacramento River, where they went immediately out to sea. They came back to spawn, and, as they say, the rest is history. Their range has continued to expand, with shad found as far south as Baja California and north to the Bering Sea.

From 1867 to 1869, Green experimented with methods to reintroduce the American shad to the Connecticut River near Holyoke. His restocking the river with shad fry resulted in a short lived 1870 harvest that was 60% larger than the one 1811. His valiant effort failed, as more dams without fish passage ensured the fish’s demise. In 1987, the American Fisheries Society enshrined Seth Green as the “Father of Fish Culture in North America.”

Depending on the source, the shad name can mean delicious, savory, good to eat, or most delicious, but they are a bony fish, and one Native American legend has it that the fish began as an unhappy porcupine and the Great Spirit was tired of its complaining, so turned it inside out, thus the bony shad.

So, there are three ways to make the fish more palatable. One is to slow-cook it by steaming, dissolving most of the smaller bones. The shad roe (egg sacks) are excellent fried or sautéed, without any special treatment.

The second is the traditional “planking.” This is done by boning the shad filet as best you can, nailing the filet to a plank with a thin strip of salt pork or a strip of bacon, and standing it upright next to an open fire. Again, the fileting and the slow cooking make the fish enjoyable.

There are some, though, who would change the plank slow cooking method just slightly. When asked, they would tell you to nail the filet to the plank with bacon or salt pork, slow cook it close to a fire, and then throw the fish away and eat the plank.

Regardless of its lack of merit as a gourmet treat, shad are a part of the natural resource base in the Connecticut River. Come on and join the celebration of their spring return to our river; stop by the fish migration viewing centers at Turner Falls or Bellows Falls.

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