Shad fishing at Rocks Village

I remember going shad fishing once with the old man when I was a kid. We came home with buckets of shad that day. I was standing in a small stream bringing up shad with a dip net. I think it was the first spring after we had moved from South Carolina up to Tewksbury, MA I'm not entirely sure it was legal, but I suspect the statute of limitations has expired by now.

Shad are an anadromous fish, which is to say that they spend their adult lives in the sea, returning to coastal rivers to spawn. The Atlantic Shad, which runs here in MA, is the largest member of the herring family. They are filter feeders, but will strike at brightly colored lures called "shad darts" during the spawn. These days folks fish for shad with a rod and reel. Ultra-light spinning tackle seems to be the equipment of choice, with longer rods around the 7 foot range.




There was a pretty decent write up in the March issue of On the Water magazine about a place called Rocks Village on the banks of the Merrimack River in Haverhill, MA. If you're a google earth user, the place is 42°48'38.14"N 70°59'50.03"W

Yesterday, I took a spin up to Haverhill to check out the situation. I took along my neoprene waders and some ultra light tackle. The weather was pretty lousy with light drizzle and temps around 50. I found a little bait & tackle shop on route 110 in Merrimac, MA that had a decent selection of shad darts so I picked up 15 or so in various sizes and colors and headed over to the spot mentioned in On The Water.

There were about 5 guys fishing from shore when I got there at noon, and a couple of small john boats anchored just off shore. I fished there for about 3 hours but didn't get a single strike. I did manage to lose about 5 darts though. Nobody else seemed to be getting any hits either.

There were a number of small birds flying close to shore and it looked like they were hovering over bait fish. None of them were actually diving into the water though. I'm not sure what was holding their attention but I suspect it might have been river herring. There have been lots of reports of river herring moving into the coastal rivers of MA. In fact, there was a sign posted at the spot that mentioned that possessing river herring is currently illegal in MA. If you do any amount of striper fishing, you already know about that.

So, I have to mark this day down as a "skunk". It still beats a good day at work though.