On a beautiful late-spring evening, I was swinging a fly on a small stream in southern New England. I’d heard it hosted a run of American shad. The notion of anadromous fish that grow to more than 7 pounds, swim up small streams and take a fly held a strong allure.
But I’d never chased shad, and I found it frustrating. The stream was cloaked in maples and oaks, and I lost flies in the branches overhead and on the woody detritus stuck in the fine sediment on the bed of the slow stream. I saw a couple of promising swirls, but that was it. Not a single bump.
Maybe I’d placed too much faith in the stream. I’d moved east from Montana six months earlier and left behind a tight tribe of angling buddies and the finest trout fishing in the lower 48. So I was hoping shad and striped bass would
