In the Northeast, as the last delicious days of late April blossom into early May, a certain section of the Delaware River gleams like the center of the universe. No, it’s not the Upper Delaware’s wild trout section, smothered by too many drift boats and wade anglers (yeah, I’m one of them). To reach these less fashionable waters, head south into the 40-mile-long Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area — sometimes called the Middle Delaware. Swap out your five-weight with a stout six or a forgiving seven. And don’t forget the stripping basket you used last fall for stripers. Because it’s time for shad.
Shad of the Middle Delaware act like an entirely different species from the skinny post-spawners that sometimes take dries in the upper river come June. Those fish have burned through much of their fat reserves and fight like a marathoner approaching mile twenty-six. Muscular mid-river shad will scorch your line hand, grabbing a fast-stripped streamer with the same blunt force of a determined bluefish.
Fly anglers specializing in them tape their fingers as if they were chasing tarpon. They position themselves along channel edges or the tailouts of deep pools, casting bright streamers on short leaders looped to fast-sinking shooting lines. They haul, shoot, and strip until the line lurches. Headshakes bounce the rod followed by a chattering run and sometimes a clean leap or two. Most shad are immediately released. A few in-the-know anglers bleed a fish riverside before icing it. They’ll bring it home for baking, pickling, or a several-hour session in a smoker. Roe is steamed in bacon, which is crisped just before serving. Milt, admittedly for the bold, can be sauteed and served with lemon. It’s not bad.
All of this happens as the middle river corridor bursts with fecundity. Trees wear the lacy pale green foliage of the new spring. Others erupt in purple, pink, or white flowers. Migratory songbirds — many fresh from wintering in the neotropics — forage among the young growth. They flash their newly molted plumage while they hunt and peck for insects. The woods fill with birdsong.
This year, a group of fishing friends decided to suckle on this mid-river bounty by camping north of the Delaware Water Gap at a state park in New Jersey. The campsite, randomly picked among more than a dozen sites available, turned out to be perched high on a bank with a commanding view of a wide expanse of glimmering river. We proclaimed it Shad Camp.
And we lorded over Shad Camp, watching the sun dip below the horizon as a campfire crackled. Dinner was served — a combination of leftover sausage lasagna and store-bought chicken parm. A chocolate babka for dessert came directly from a Brooklyn food co-op. It was a banquet for kings.
Then came the shad, which began to pile into a shallow flat in front of us. In the evenings, if the water has reached more than 60 degrees, shad will begin their spawning ritual. They zoom into the shallows pushing V-wakes, males chasing females. Don’t bother casting for them; when they are hyper-focused on making more shad, they ignore flies. It’s for the best.
But you can certainly watch. We gawked at the spectacle from our camp chairs, ooing and ahhing while shad boiled and churned the river’s surface. It grew darker until we could only hear their spawning orgy. By then a chorus of tiny spring peepers had joined in from the far side of the river, followed by the trilling of American toads mating along the shallows. Then a whippoorwill began its lonely call from somewhere in the woods behind us. One of us opened a bottle, and a brown liquid was poured and shared. We toasted the shad, the river, and Shad Camp.
We knew these same fish would eventually pile into a deep channel just upriver to rest. By tomorrow morning, they would hit a fast-stripped fly. Our fully rigged rods rested comfortably against a tree and our waders were draped over the side view mirrors of our cars. Yes, tomorrow we would be ready for them. But for now, with the Middle Delaware in full supernova, we just sat and watched and listened.
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