Cool Spring Extends The

Shad Run

By Trudy Tynan Associated Press

HOLYOKE –– The lilacs have gone by and the white blossoms of the shad bush are just a memory, but with this spring’s cool, rainy weather, the shad and salmon are still running in the Connecticut River.

“It’s almost unheard of,” said Mickey Novak, a fisheries biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. “But the prolonged cold weather and cool river temperatures have kept the shad moving upstream.”

Old-timers marked the appearance of the largest and feistiest members of the herring family, often called “poor man’s salmon,” by the spring blooms of their namesake plants.

The first of the sea-running shad begin returning to coastal rivers to spawn in early April. The high point of the run usually is in early May, when the shad bush blooms. The arrival of the largest fish, the lilac shad, typically mark the end of the run in late May and early June.

But not this year.

With the unseasonably cool, rainy weather, the river temperature has yet to reach the 70-degree mark that triggers the spawning instinct in the shad, Novak said.

That could change quickly with this week’s warmer temperatures. But for now, with the water temperature still in the 60s, hundreds of shad were still making their way over the fish lift at the Holyoke Dam, 86 miles from the sea.

So far, more than 287,000 shad have returned to the river, making this spring’s run among the largest in recent years.

In 1999 about 196,549 shad swam up the river in one of the smallest runs, while last year 374,543 were counted.

Unlike Atlantic salmon, shad, which spawn in the river’s main stem as well as its tributaries, never completely disappeared from the Connecticut with the construction of dams.

With the construction of lifts and ladders, shad now spawn in the river as far north as southern Vermont and biologists truck some from the Holyoke Dam to the Ashuelot River, a tributary of the Connecticut in southwestern New Hampshire, Mr Novak said.

The cool water temperatures have also served to keep the fish fit and healthy, he said.

“The cold and rain is not good for humans, but there are species that benefit,” Mr Novak said.