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Shad moving upriver

Biologists locate first shad in modern times in Rappahannock upstream of Embrey Dam

By RUSTY DENNEN

Date published: 4/16/2004

By RUSTY DENNEN Biologists find fish above dam

As a state fisheries biologist, Alan Weaver has heard his share of fish stories.

But the one he's telling about hickory shad swimming above the recently breached Embrey Dam is no whopper.

Technicians with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries found them plentiful in a spot about half a mile above the dam during sampling last Friday.

In a boat equipped with an electric shocking device that temporarily stuns fish and brings them to the surface, the two-man crew quickly netted 50 or 60 shad.

Finding shad above the dam "is obviously pretty significant," said Weaver, fish-passage coordinator for the game department. Shad and herring are anadromous fish, spending their adult lives in the ocean but returning to freshwater to spawn.

The main reason for breaching the obsolete dam--and spending $10 million in taxpayers' money to remove it--was to open a fish passage and create upstream spawning grounds. The shad have been blocked from the upper Rappahannock and its tributaries for a century and a half by the 1910 Embrey Dam and a smaller, wooden crib dam built in 1855.

Weekly fish sampling began in early March, about two weeks after a section of Embrey Dam was opened by explosives Feb. 23.

Until last week there was no sign of the fish, which are gathering in increasing numbers in their annual spring spawning run.

"As soon as [the crew] got in the water, they could see them, swarms of fish moving up-stream," Weaver said this week. "It would have been exciting to find one, but they had the live well full on the boat. They could have collected several hundred fish."

A normal river flow for this time of year, combined with relatively clear water, probably helped the fish make it through the dam.

Fisheries technicians Chip Augustine and Andrew Skelton maneuvered their boat to a point about halfway between the dam and the Interstate 95 bridge. One steered and operated the shocking probe, while the other netted the stunned fish. They released the fish after counting them.

For years, state game biologists have been sampling the migratory fish populations below the dam. It was a good spot because it was the end of the line for the fish.

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Date published: 4/16/2004