18 June 9- 23, 2017 VOL. 36 • ISS. 13

Kjell Nyothson had a great time battling this feisty American River shad..

Photo by DAN BACHER, Fish Sniffer Staff.

My favorite place to fish for them is the lower American River, where fishing for them was just as popular when I started fishing for them in high school as it is now. Shad are known for the great fights that they provide on light spinning and fly tackle, as well as for the fine tablefare they offer when smoked, pickled or baked.

On my latest venture to the river this spring, a crowd of 50 people was fishing in the Harrington Access area in Carmichael. Most reported some success, although some complained about the bite being

Sergey Voznyuk of Sacramento displays a hefty shad that he landed at Harrington’ s Access on the American River this May.

Photo by DAN BACHER, Fish Sniffer Staff.

This is a small male shad from the American River. The males show in numbers first during the run, followed later by the larger female shad.

Photo by DAN BACHER, Fish Sniffer Staff. slower than it had been. Most of the fish were small males from 13 to 16 inches long, with a few larger fish mixed in.

Sergey Voznyuk of Sacramento reported catching 9 shad in two hours of fishing while drift fishing with a 1 / 32 ounce pink jig head with a chartreuse grubtail, weighed down with a ¼ oz. split shot /

Kjell Nyoth also caught 4 fish while using grubs on spinning gear. The biggest fish brought in by any other the anglers weighed around 2-1 / 2 pounds.

This has been a good year to date on the lower American, due to the heavy flows on the river all winter and spring. Releases from Nimbus Dam at press time were 9,500 cfs. American shad, rather than going back to their specific tributary rivers like salmon and steelhead tend to do, go concentrate on where the flows in the river system are the highest. When flows are high on the American, you can expect a significant number of fish, including those spawned on the Sacramento and Feather, to make a right turn into the river at Discovery Park.

American shad, like striped bass, are a native to the Eastern Seaboard. Shad were first introduced to the West Coast from the Hudson River in New York in 1871. After shipment across the country in 8-gallon milk cans, the California Fish Commission released about ten thousand shad from the Hudson River into the Sacramento River. The fish naturally occurs on the Atlantic Coast from the Sand Hill River in Labrador to the St. Johns River in Florida. By 1891, the fish had expanded its range on the West Coast as far as Alaska.( https:// nas. er. usgs. gov / queries / factsheet. aspx? SpeciesID = 491)

Since then, the feisty herring have migrated from saltwater every year to spawn in the American and other Central Valley rivers. In addition to the Sacramento and San Joaquin River systems, shad migrate into the Russian, Klamath, Trinity and other rivers.

Few studies have been conducted in California on shad populations, although studies have been conducted on them in other states where they are found. One thing that is known is their numbers have declined since the beginning of state and federal water exports from the Sacramento-San

Joaquin River Delta in 1967.

The annual California Department of Fish and Wildlife mid water trawl survey, where the young-of-theyear shad and other fish species are surveyed at a numbers of locations throughout the estuary, has shown a 97.7 percent overall shad decline from 1967 through 2015, according to Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

The decline of shad occurs in the context of the overall collapse of Delta fish populations, due to the massive export of water by state and federal water pumping facilities on the Delta. From 1967 through 2015, populations of striped bass, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, splittail and threadfin shad also declined by 99.7, 98.3, 99.9, 98.5 and 93.7 percent, respectively, according to Jennings.

On a positive note, the abundance index – a relative measure of abundance- for American shad, rose from