A lost phone and the shad Oracle

On B’s advice, he and I decided that fly fishing probably wasn’t the best choice of technique for the newfound spot de la spot. Fishing from the bank, there would be little room behind us for a forward cast and a roll cast wouldn’t get out as far as B witnessed the fish being caught during his reconnaissance mission. The two of us nixed the gear we had spent a good deal of money on, instead favoring the seasons-old multiple spin casting rods and reels, tackle boxes full of lures mainly for bass, the shad flies we’d tied, and some "sure-fire" lures, (in case the flies didn't work) called shad darts, which I'd purchased a 3-pack of during my most recent trip to the tackle shop. Being superstitious fishermen, B and I decided we needed an addition to our party to offset the bad luck the two of us magnified. Enter Joey.
The three of us set out towards 14th Street with high hopes for tight lines. Upon arrival at the Mayo Bridge we discovered all the fishermen in the greater Richmond area had the same idea as us. Being a nice day, we expected a crowd like B had seen the day before, but not a fishing gala. The bridge was lined nearly elbow-to-elbow with anglers on the hunt for poor man’s tarpon. What was so good about these fish that people came out in droves seeking its sustenance? We parked and B led us to the trail he had discovered. To the left of the bridge below the rapids of the James’ Fall Line, (above which the James River is no longer tidal) the banks were equally as crowded as the bridge itself, so we took a right—going under the bridge and onto the trail not so heavily traveled. Our group took it as a sign that fewer people fished the bank on this calmer side of the bridge, but having no choice/standing room in the matter, we found an empty spot outside of the casting range of those on the bridge and climbed down the rocks to the river’s edge. Joey took the far right downstream position while I stood between him and B, who decided to stay closer to the bridge and the eddies it created.
The shad didn’t seem to like Rapalas, rooster tails, buzzbaits, or Carolina rigged worms. The fish also didn’t like the Tommy’s Torpedoes or Crazy Charlies B and I tied for the purpose of fly fishing, but now used on our spinning gear; at least not the way we were fishing them. I tried using the sure-fire shad darts too, but they weren't working either. Having no topographic knowledge of what lied under the river’s surface, and the fact that it was low tide, initially we all lost several lures to snags. However we all improved our snag retrieving ability, enduring fewer losses as the day progressed.
Looking under the bridge to the left of our position, we saw fishermen and women, young and old, having no problems catching the silver sided wonders. The shad did indeed leap several feet into the air, some repeatedly. They looked fun to catch, I wanted one. I wanted ten. At least we knew the fish were here, or there, under the bridge. Though, without knowing how to catch them we might as well have been fishing in the Dead Sea.
“This guy’s got one” Joey announced, speaking of the gentleman on his right, even farther downstream. Now the shad were on either side of us; we had no excuse for failure.
“What’s he using?” I asked Joey.
“It looks like a little spoon or something” Joey responded, not having gotten a good look at the lure.
I dug through my tackle box in search of something spoon-like. All I found was a three inch Mooselook lure I used for walleye in Canada, but I tied it on anyways. Cast, nothing. Cast, nothing. Cast, nothing.
“That guy’s got another one” Joey chirped, again. “Oh,” he paused, “His buddy has one too.”
I looked at B with clenched teeth. His face reddened as he realized that our trio was the only group on the river getting skunked.
“He’s got another one” Joey superfluously alerted.
Just then a barrel-chested, white haired, though younger looking man than his hair suggested, descended from the trail onto the rocks heading towards us, rod in hand. He stopped ten feet shy of the river and began scouring the rocks intently. I instantly recognized the man as local Richmond barbecue celebrity, “Buzz” having seen him on the Food Network channel on several occasions. After several minutes of searching, B inquired what the search was for.
“I lost my cell phone down here last night and figured I might get really lucky and find it today” un-introduced Buzz said sarcastically as he smiled, knowing he had no chance of finding his lost phone.
“You all catching everything in the river?” He asked, not having seen the lures we were using which would have answered his question.
“Not a thing man” B responded as he reeled in his cast and set his rod down to join in the investigation. I joined in as well, allowing Joey and everyone else to have a chance to catch some fish while we explored under the rocks.
“So did you at least catch a few when you were down here last night?” I asked him.
“Yeah man, caught seven” Buzz replied.
“Right in this very spot?” I asked.
“Yep.”
Not being the least bit ashamed of admitting I had no idea what I was doing, I asked what he was using when he’d caught the supposed seven glorious shad the night before.
“Got em’ all on this shad dart” he said as he unhooked the lure he was referring to from the lowest guide on his rod.
His dart was much like the one I'd tried using. The lures resembled distorted jellybeans, his was colored black for the first quarter of its body, the remainder colored bright orange. Mine was red and chartreuse respectively. They're tapered—fat to skinny from the flat, angled head, to the bend of the hook where the body ends.
“I guess it’s supposed to look like a bug or somethin’, I don’t know. They love em’ though. It’s all I use” he added.
As we continued the search we talked more about shad darts: favorite colors to use, techniques to use when retrieving, the affects of adding an orange bead to the line above the dart, as Buzz had; more of the same types of questions I’d asked repeatedly at the fly fishing section of the tackle shop months earlier.
“You just gotta jerk and reel, jerk and reel” Buzz said while demonstrating the motion he employed for shad catching success. I had been simply reeling the lure in. “Sometimes you gotta slow it down, sometimes speed it up, but never stop jerkin’ that thing in.” Eureka!
As Joey fished, B and I became co-Alexanders to Buzz’s Aristotle, memorizing every tactic necessary for defeating the shad in future battles. For some reason I believed him more than the guys from the tackle store; it must have been his sage-like white hair, coupled with the fact I was familiar with the deliciousness of his famous pork ribs—sheer brilliance.
The search came to an end as Buzz grew tired of looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack, or maybe he was just tired of fielding our questions.
“Here” he said, cutting the leader his dart and bead were attached to from the swivel separating the leader from his line, “I’m not gonna fish tonight and I have tons of these at home, you guys take this one.”
“Are you sure?” B and I asked almost in unison.
“Yeah, I really have a bunch of em.’ I’d probably snag this one anyways” he said smiling again. “You gotta remember: jerk and reel, jerk and reel” he added, once again demonstrating the exact motion.
We thanked him for the gifts of the lure and knowledge, and he turned and went slowly back up the rock, head down, still searching for the M.I.A. phone. B tied on the dart.
“He’s got another one” Joey echoed, bringing our mindset back to the battlefield. “What was the deal with that guy?” He asked.
“He lost his phone last night” I told my half-interested friend.
“He’s not gonna find that” Joey stated as he reeled in his last cast and attached whatever it was he was using to a middle guide on his rod, then reeling in the slack until his rod tip bent. He picked up his tackle box with his spare hand. “Well I’m outta here.”
With little fanfare, Joey gave up and made his way back up the rocks to the trail.
“Let me know if you guys get anything.” Joey yelled. “I won’t be expecting any calls” he had to add.
I looked back to see Buzz now standing atop the trail dozens of yards away, uselessly scanning under the rocks in his vicinity. He happened to look up, making eye contact with me, and began demonstrating the magical dart technique for the third time. I smiled and waved at him, nodding my understanding. I decided to retry the chartreuse 1/4 ounce dart I'd been using earlier to no avail, now that I'd been enlightened with the knowledge of its proper use.

Cast; jerk and reel, jerk and reel. Cast; jerk and reel, jerk and reel. Cast, jerk and BIG jerk back causing my rod to bend in half. Finally! I had something on the end of my line and figured it could only be my first shad. My inference was proven correct as the beautiful fish shot two feet out of his element and into mine landing side-first, creating a magnificent splash. B looked up from the water in front of him, as surprised as I was, happy that at least one of us had a stroke of luck. Not wanting to lose the creature, I horsed him in rather quickly as if he was the last fish needed for the livewell in a B.A.S.S. sanctioned tournament, caught just in time for weigh-in. As he was brought to within several feet of me he made one final vigorous run, taking a few yards of line off my reel. I grew nervous thinking he'd get off, but kept my line taught and brought him in all this way this time from the water to the rocks where I stood. The fish's body convulsed as it struggled to bounce off the foreign objects back to its home. I set my rod down and reached over to pick up my trophy.

A more slippery and pungent smelling fish I have never before beheld. Scales fell off the shad as he slithered out of my grip and back to the rocks. I again picked him up; from the toothless lip this time like a bass, and unhooked him from the dart, holding him up for B to see. I was all smiles.

"Check it out man." I told my friend. Without thinking about my next statement before it was stated I told him, "Man you gotta get one of these. That was awesome!"

He acknowledged my words with minimal sarcasm showing through in his face, saying, "Yeah man. Good work."

I gratefully nodded and placed the fish back into the water as I thanked him, or her, for the great fight and the ability to add a shad to my list of species caught. B and I fished for a little while longer, he with Buzz's dart, me with mine, catching no additional fish, but it didn't matter. One fish was enought for today. The stage was set. B and I were destined for shad mastery.

The Shadventure Continues

That night I got a call from B, one of my fellow participants in the shad initiation fiasco. After being dropped off at home, his frustration had apparently been at a higher level than mine, (sans torn waders) or it might have been that he was just more persistent than I felt like being at the moment. Whatever the trait may have been, he said he’d decided to scout the city for a new potential spot several restless hours later. Without rod or reel, but with much determination, he set out to prove first and foremost to himself that there were fish in the James River. This is his story.
It was now early evening as B drove determined through the desolate streets of Shockoe Slip not knowing where he was heading, using only his recently discovered shad sense as his guide. That very shad sense told him to turn right on 14th Street and continue towards the Mayo Bridge, on the way to the famous floodwall erected to protect Richmond from the mighty James during its angry flood stages.
Onward he pressed, disregarding cautious yellow stoplights that ripened to a halting red before he had the slightest chance of scurrying under their commanding presence. He didn’t care. He drove—drove like a man possessed by the power of an empty hook void of a fish’s mouth; a man possessed by a straight rod standing unbent by a fish’s fight. Over cobblestone and railroad tracks he drove, straight towards the Mayo Bridge.
His shad sense suddenly began to calm his strained nerves as his eyes scanned the curbs lining the bridge’s four foot walls. His right foot rose off the gas pedal and the car decelerated to a mild jog. Fishermen. His pupils dilated, his hands twitched, and he began to salivate like a Pavlovian canine. Dozens of fishermen. They stood upon the sidewalk running parallel to 14th Street atop the very bridge he was crossing casting from high on their perch to the river yards below them. “Where there are fishermen, there’s got to be fish” he said aloud to himself. Feeling as giddy as a child overdosed on Pixie Sticks, he snapped out of his daze and reintroduced the gas pedal to the floorboard of his Altima. Racing across the bridge he frantically scanned the area for available parking. “LEFT!” His shad sense thundered in his head, as he turned to find a questionably legal patch of gravel to park in next to an abandoned Southern States warehouse.
Overly excited, B neglected a safe method of stopping; thoughtlessly hurling the car dangerously close to peril as his right hand yanked the emergency brake like a parachute’s rip cord. Having ignored the floor brake altogether, the Altima’s wheels locked, sending the sedan skidding recklessly over the loose rocks before coming to a jarring stop in cloud of dust and smoke from the burnt tires, inches in front of the warehouse. Not even comprehending the potential harm he’d almost caused to himself and his car, B hastily twisted the keys out of the ignition with one hand while simultaneously opening his door with the other. He leaped out of the vehicle in a single bound and ran towards the bridge. Across what used to be 14th, now Hull Street on this unexplored side of city and river, he found a path leading down to the banks of the James.
Standing even with it’s height, but west of the Mayo Bridge, B looked down to see the path twisting from left to right and left again as dirt replaced pavement and the trail leveled out even with the river. Here more fishermen stood mere feet apart from one another casting off the bank into the churning water. Rods bent in half as men leaned back using their staffs to leverage themselves between the fish they’d hooked and the currents the fish were using against their predators. Brilliant silver sided fish jumped feet into the air. “I was right. There are fish here!” B chuckled to himself. Choosing not to take the latter left, B stayed on the paved path taking him under the bridge then up a mild incline between boulders lining the bank of the James on one side and the wall on the other.

Here he saw more of the same; fishermen doing what fishermen were supposed to do—catch fish. Only knowing what a shad looked like based on internet research, B could only assume that was precisely the species he was witnessing due to their marvelously acrobatic moves. After spectating as long as he could take it, (not having his equipment to join in the catching) B walked proudly back to his car calling me in the process to relay his discovery.
…
“Who was that?” My wife the runner asked after my conversation with B was over. She could see I was getting riled up.
“It was B” I happily announced. “He said there were guys all around the Mayo Bridge downtown catching all sorts of stuff, probably shad! He said something about a trail running the length of the river down there and you can fish right off of it!”
“You never listen to me” she said.
I was dumbfounded, as I’d expected a more positive, albeit most likely sarcastically positive, “Really? That’s great honey.”
“What does this have to do with me not listening to you?” I asked.
“I’ve been running that trail for two years now. I told you about it at least a dozen times.”
Needless to say, at least for this past month I have listened more closely to my wife.

Running with the Shad on the James River

Relentlessly rainy April came to Richmond.
I had been frequenting a local tackle conglomerate for two months now, enough that my face was well known in the fly fishing section of the store. While shopping for more and more superfluous tying materials, I’d ask about shad fishing techniques: flies the fish had been known to attack, whether sinking line was better than floating line, speed of retrieve, and the list went ruthlessly on—and on again with each repeat visit; same questions. I had begun to suspect that storewide APB’s were sent in code to warn the sector’s employees of my presence, giving them enough of a warning from the time it took me to walk from the front door to their sector that they could find a way to escape my imminent barrage of repetitive questions. I’m almost certain the announcement on the store’s PA system of, “Jerk baits line 4” meant I was on the premises. By now employees had become too busy to talk and I took the hint. Enough talk. I’d heard through the grapevine that the much anticipated shad run was now full on in the James River anyways. Though, unless the fish are on the end of my line they don’t exist.
So I scrounged up some fishing buddies and set out with all of my new fly gear; reels with both floating and sinking line, dozens of Tommy’s Torpedo variants I’d been told to tie by my friends at the tackle warehouse, a fresh out of the box pair of waders and a vest a size too small. I imagine other fishermen on the river would have seen me as the typical city boy trying his best to look like the cover of the spring L.L. Bean catalogue, while possessing the fly fishing skill of a day-trader on his first trip to the outdoors. I felt like a fat-man-in-a-little-vest. When had the river all to ourselves, which should have told me something.
Due to the river’s height after the incessant rain I could barely get safely far enough off the bank to accomplish a full forward cast, but at least my sinking line was getting down in the strong current. My hope for landing a nice hickory or American shad on my 8’6 Sage ran as high as the river. Also called poor man’s tarpon, shad, I’d heard were some of the best fighting fish for their size; putting up an acrobatic fight, jumping feet into the air similar to their larger relatives, and never giving up until they were in the net or on the bank. Cast after cast I made in this hole and that, behind that eddy and under those branches. But, after spending the greater part of a day walking up and down a two mile span of river I thought would be great shad habitat, I’d had not so much as a snag. The luck of my fishing buddies was equal to mine. Shad-1, Determined anglers who didn’t want to admit defeat-0. My group and I irritably threw in the towel.
I actually needed that towel to dry off my right leg after taking a rock to the knee of my new waders and tearing a hole in them just big enough to soak my right foot with cold river water. Kick me when I’m down. After dropping my buddies off I continued home with a cold and wet right foot, now emanating the pungency of athlete’s foot fungus into my nostrils. Not the best day. Frustrated that all the research I’d done to prepare for my first shad outing had gotten us nowhere, I began to wonder if we were even fishing in the right place…