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Shad were typically harvested with large nets and pulled into vessels or ashore by hand. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the labor force behind this fishery was largely enslaved, and on Chesapeake rivers, these African-American fishermen and women kept the international shad industry fueled with hundreds of thousands of pounds of fish each spring.
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ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com
vital role shad played in the town’s springtime economy and culture. “In the early history of this town, shad fishing was the principal industry. In fact, for many years, it was a special cash income to the laboring people, who sacrificed everything like work for the spring fishing for shad.” But the story of shad stopped short in the 20th century. Along with it went all of the Chesapeake’s associated traditions and tastes. As dams were built, shad stopped arriving in our waterways and on our plates. And for the last part of the century, though the remaining few were protected by a moratorium, it seemed shad were pretty much gone for good. To understand the shad story, you have to start long ago when the Chesapeake’s waterways were wide open, flowing tributaries. American shad, Alosa sapidissima, are anadromous. This means they spawn in the headwaters of the Chesapeake’s rivers where they were born, and return to the ocean as small fry where they grow and mature. Once ready to reproduce, they begin the journey back
May/June 2022
to their natal waters and arrive in springtime to repeat the process. All up and down the East Coast, shad followed the same cycle, joined by other species that share their wandering ways: alewife, hickory shad, blueback herring. Together, millions of fish in one raging, silvery torrent flooded from the sea to the spawning grounds of their birth every April, forming a vital link in the food chain for all sorts of other species—including humans. The Chesapeake’s native populations built funnel-shaped weirs from stone to catch and trap shad; some of the weirs still remain on the bottom of the Susquehanna and Rappahannock in ghostly, submerged vees. In open water, they also constructed forebears of the modern-day pound net. And to fully harness the potential of the shad run, they also night-fished for them, using small fires in their clay-lined dugout canoes to attract and catch huge schools. Smoked slowly over the heat from slow-burning fires, the catch sustained tribal communities throughout the year. After colonization, shad formed the backbone of the Chesapeake’s first commercial fishing industry. Shad were easily
