![]() But if you want to catch fish till your arms ache and your thumbs are shredded from striper teeth, come on. ![]() Little is known about hickory shad during their life at sea. Hickory shad typically spawn during the night in shallow water with a rocky bottom when water temperatures are between 58 F and 62 F. There are fishing guides from hours away, locals on their lunch break, and boats as far as you can see. These migrations are called shad runs and may cover hundreds of miles to the headwaters of these systems. The line at the boat ramp can be forty-five minutes long. You will hardly be alone on the Roanoke when the striped bass run. By April, the first striped bass will show, and on a good day, with a stout seven- or eight-weight, you can catch dozens. The timing differs slightly from river to river, but here on the Roanoke, the great waves of hickory shad are followed by a smaller push of the larger American shad, which can run to seven pounds and better. In a single tail flick, she’s gone, a shimmer of silver and olive green that disappears like a spark into the night sky. I slip the hook from her mouth and let her swim out of my hand. I typically keep a couple of roe fish from my first trip to the Roanoke, but it seems a shame to kill this inaugural shad, one so obliging as to nudge open the door to another season. It’s a female, her belly swollen with roe. I play the shad, steering it out of the heavy current where it wants to go, and pluck it from the water at boatside.
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