Explore upstream and downstream to find solitude and willing shad. Fly anglers don’t do well here, simply because of the crowds and the limited casting room.
At the peak of the run, gear-anglers stand shoulder to shoulder on both sides of the river, taking fish after fish, filling 5-gallon buckets. Without doubt, Bonneville Dam attracts the most anglers. Go fishing when the numbers exceed 20,000 fish per day. At the run’s peak, 100,000 fish may crowd their way past Bonneville Dam in a single day. The bulk of the run is akin to a pig passing through a boa constrictor. They push upriver toward Bonneville Dam during the first few weeks of June and continue upriver toward the John Day Pool. The migration starts to arrive in mid-May in the lower river, around Camas and Washougal. In Washington, there’s no doubt where the shad run, as do all anadromous fish reaching the interior of the Evergreen State - the Columbia River. Confederate General George Pickett and his staff missed the fracas - instead they attended a shad bake. Eighty years later, shad played a part in the Civil War’s last battle. Historians note, the Continental Army camped at Valley Forge during the American Revolution made it through that bitter winter nourished in no small part by smoked shad. Their range has continued to expand, with fish found as far south as Todos Santos in Baja California and north to the Bering Sea.įor your inner biologist, their scientific name, Alosa sapidissima, comes from “allis” - the Saxon word for European shad - and the Latin word “sapidissima” - meaning “most delicious.” Shad played a role in at least two wars fought on American soil. The only known shad stocking, other than the Seth Green plant, was one in 1885 on the Columbia River. Before the decade expired, shad were swimming in several California rivers, made their way north into the Columbia River, and swam their way onto menus of tony San Francisco restaurants. Shad are notoriously migratory, looking for new rivers to call home, and they answered the call, swimming into new haunts along the West Coast. Seth Green, the “father of United States fish culture” emptied the fish in the Sacramento River where they, being anadromous, immediately went to the sea. So it is with the “poor man’s tarpon” - the American shad.Īn east coast transplant, American shad came to California by train in 1871 in milk buckets.
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