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Hatchery sustains American shad run on the Pamunkey River; millions of hatchery fish are headed for the Rappahannock Date published: 5/2/2004 By RUSTY DENNEN NDER a shimmering blue sky, Henry Langston eased his john- boat into position on a rippling expanse of the Pamunkey River. Langston, a Pamunkey Indian, pulled lengths of gill net from a blue plastic drum, untangling each section before setting it below large orange corks in the brown, swirling water. It was late afternoon and windy, and there was no time to waste. "I knew I shouldn't have come out here today," Langston shouted to Warren Cook, assistant chief of the tribe in a nearby boat. A smile creased Langston's weathered face. At 75, and after having worked as a baker before returning to live on the 1,200-acre reservation in King William County in 1972, he loves what he's doing. He is one of a half-dozen native fishermen who supply brood fish each spring to the reservation's American shad hatchery about an hour and a half southeast of Fredericksburg. The men are paid $150 a day to catch the sleek, silver-scaled fish. Their eggs and sperm are extracted to produce millions of baby shad, which are released back into the river each spring. The tribe has counted on the now-scarce fish for centuries. Now, the Pamunkeys are working to bring them back. State-run hatcheries similar to the Pamunkeys' supply shad fry for Virginia rivers such as the Rappahannock in an effort to help the species recover. Hooked on shadLangston has caught shad on the Pamunkey River for more than 60 years. As a boy, he'd go out with his grandfather to help. Later, as a young man, he got a boat and motor and fished with his uncle Silas. "We'd split the catch, 50-50," said Langston, who retired in 1986 from Nabisco Bakery in Richmond. Most afternoons during shad season, which runs from mid-March to mid-May, Langston puts in his aluminum boat at the Pamunkey landing and heads to one of a couple favored spots on the river.
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