Information & Facts

Species Name
American shad
(Alosa sapidissima)

Common Names
Shad

Size Range
Length to 30 inches and weight to 12 pounds, more commonly to 20 inches and 5 or 6 pounds. Females are larger than males.

Description
The back is metallic-blue to greenish, shading through white to silvery on the belly. A row or rows of dark spots decreases in size toward the tail. These spots are not always visible, but show up when the fish are scaled. A very distinctive characteristic is the saw-like serrated edge along the midline of the belly.

Like salmon and steelhead, shad are anadromous. Many shad continue to spawn annually. For the uninitiated, shad are over-grown members of the herring family that spend most of their life in the ocean and then return to freshwater rivers to spawn (like salmon, only most shad don’t die after spawning). Native to the East Coast, shad were transplanted to the West in the 1800’s and have flourished since. Out West, the Columbia River plays host to the largest runs followed by the Sacramento River and her main tributaries, the American, Feather and Yuba rivers. Back East, shad roam the Atlantic from Florida to Nova Scotia and spawn in many drainages in-between, including the Delaware, Susquehanna, Juniata, Delaware, Schuylkill and Lehigh rivers.

How to fish for American Shad

Depending on the location and temperature, the first waves of American Shad arrive sometime April and fishing can last through June and into July in some streams. Since American shad typically don’t feed when they’re in freshwater (they are plankton eaters in the ocean), why they’ll bite a fly or lure is not completely understood. As with river salmon, the general consensus is shad strike out of aggression.

The classic red & white shad dart still catches plenty of fish today!

Shad darts and small flutter spoons like Dick Nites are the top weapons for anglers working big rivers like the Columbia and Willamette. While red/white and solid yellow were the staple color schemes back in the 1970’s and early 80’s, chartreuse and hot pink seem to be the two favorites now. Of course, it’s a good idea to keep a variety of colors and sizes on hand in case the shad are in a “retro” mood.
Shad are notoriously fickle and will sometimes bite the heck out of a one particular color, and then, without warning, they’ll be onto a new one. Experimentation is the key. If you can see fish but aren’t getting bit, change jig colors frequently until you find the one the fish want at that particular moment. And, just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, be ready to switch again…

Most shad fishing is done with light spinning gear. A 6- to 7 ½-foot stick with a soft tip and plenty of backbone in the lower two-thirds of its length is perfect. A forgiving tip will help protect light leaders and also aid in the detection of subtle strikes. Having a stout lower end will enable you to turn fish without wearing them out to the point of exhaustion. Spinning reels should be loaded with 4- to 8-pound test and need to have smooth and durable drags – shad put up a good scrap! Abu Garcia’s Orra SX is a nice little reel with a reasonable price tag.

Shad are a schooling fish and usually where you find one, you find a whole bunch. The really important thing to understand about these jumbo herring is they school up in long, almost single file lines rather than tightly-bunched packs like other fish. There could be a school of 500 fish in front of you but you’d swear that the pool’s devoid of fish because you’ve been making casts a foot or two on either side of the narrow, strung-out band of shad.

Shore Fishing

All you really need is a light rod, a handful of jigs and/or darts and some desire. The key is to be able to locate shad holding water.
Deep, slow pools are good places to begin your quest. Shad tend to hold throughout the heat of the day in such spots, where they’ll often wait for evening to fall before they continue upstream. Long, uniform flats with slow to moderate current will also attract shad, as will the mouths of tributary streams, current seams and soft current edges. Shad aren’t big fans of ascending falls, heavy rapids, fish ladders and the like, so the areas just downstream of such obstructions are also worthy of investigation. Once you’ve found a good-looking spot, start by tying on a jig or dart that’s just heavy enough to get to the bottom but light enough to drift with the current. If you need extra weight to get down, add some splitshot or a slip sinker 18 to 24 inches above the lure. Position yourself upstream of the water you want to fish and cast slightly down and across the current. Allow your offering to sink near the bottom and swing in a downstream arc. As it drifts, give the jig some action by raising the rod tip 12 inches or so every 3 to 5 seconds. This jigging motion seems to really appeal to the curious nature of the fish and will draw strikes when a simple “dead drift” approach doesn’t work.

Let the rig drift through the entire run and when it ends up in a position directly downstream of you, jig it a few times in place and then reel up and cast again. Be sure to cover every inch of the area you’re fishing because shad can be very easy to miss (remember the long, skinny schools we just talked about?). A jig cast a couple feet on either side of the fish can go unnoticed.

You can also fish jigs and darts under a bobber. Slip floats are the best type of bobber to use for this style of fishing because you can easily adjust the depth at which you are fishing. Set your lure to run a foot or two off the bottom and let it drift through the run with a drag-free presentation. In other words, make sure there is as little line sitting on the water as possible between your float and your rod tip. If any downstream bows for in your line, lift the line off the water (called mending) by raising the rod tip high and to the upstream side of the bobber. Braided line works really well for bobber fishing because it floats. Just be sure to run about 10 feet of clear monofilament or fluorocarbon for a leader.

Catching shad from a boat

Generally speaking, the best way to catch shad from a boat is to anchor up to the side or just above a holding area. Just like bank fishing, you’ll want to cast slightly down and across and let your offering drift close to the bottom. As it swings, be sure to impart the same jigging motion as you would if you were fishing from shore. Once the drift is complete and your rig is downstream of your position, however, you don’t necessarily have to reel in. You’ll catch a lot of fish with your line straight downriver — “on the dangle.”
In fact, many boaters prefer the dangle method. They’ll simply toss their lures straight downstream and then will put their rods into holders and wait for the fish to come to them. This technique certainly has its moments, but again, I reference the part about the fact that shad swim in long, skinny schools. If you are anchored up and have your offering to the inside or outside of a travel lane, you may not get bit…while the boat next to you catches fish after fish.
On big waters like the Columbia, boaters will often anchor up with flutter spoons on a dropper. They’ll run their mainline to a three-way swivel and then run a 3- to 5-foot leader back to the spoon and a 1- to 2-foot dropper to the sinker. The rig is lowered to the bottom and then the rod is put into the holder until a fish comes along.

Shad Bites

When you get a bite, you will generally feel what amounts to a solid “thump” on your rod tip, though light biters will sometimes give you a “tap-tap” sensation. Either way, set the hook immediately as shad will dump your jig as quickly as they pick it up. Hopefully, your hook will find the roof of the fish’s mouth, where it’s most likely to stay put. The sides of a shad’s mouth are paper thin and extremely delicate – and when a fish is hooked in that area, you can almost guarantee that your jig will pull out sometime during the fight.
When the water is cold or the fish are feeling pressured, the bite can be so light that it’s almost imperceptible. One tiny tick on the line is all you get and it is so soft and so slow that it’s hard to react in time.

Prime Time

While shad can be taken throughout the day, the final 60 minutes of daylight is the “magic hour.” That’s when they normally shake off the midday blues and go on an all-out blitzkrieg assault and anything you put in the water will get eaten. As the sun continues to slip behind the horizon, the action gets even more frantic and it’s common to for everybody in sight to have a doubled-over rod. And just as the fishing reaches its climax, it suddenly goes dead with the onset of night. Shad get into spawning mode after the sun goes down, and while you’ll see them darting around just under the surface after dark, they won’t bite.
Early morning is also a great time to fish…provided the water isn’t too cold. If temps are low, stick to the afternoons so the water has a chance to bump up a few degrees.

American shad spawn in water that ranges from 55 to 68 degrees and seem to bite best when temperatures are 60 degrees or above. Any colder than that and they’ll still take a hook but with less enthusiasm.