April Ritual

Just as the cycle of the natural world bring the anadromous fish from the salt water up into the freshwater rivers to spawn, it brings me out to fish for one species, the shad. For this, I seem to have settled on Fletcher's Boat House on the Potomac in recent years.

Wednesday morning, the man at the counter looked vaguely familiar to me and I guess I to him because he didn't ask for a driver's license when I rented a row boat. He was unusually pessimistic about the fishing and suggested I try upriver where there was more current. The river levels are lower than usual at this time of year because of the lack of recent rain.

Always like the look of the Virginia shore from the river at Fletcher's Cove:

As usual, many boats are visible at any moment, so you have a sense of how well other anglers are doing and no one seemed to be catching much. I have to admit some smug satisfaction about my success which was slow but steady. In the end I got about a half dozen shad, all hickories, mostly on the spinning rod but a couple on the fly rod, in about three hours of fishing.

Came home and fished at the pond where I caught my first bluegills of the year. They were good size and I should have kept a few.