Fertilized shad eggs are about the size of BB's. State fisheries biologist Mike Isel calls them 'little diamonds.' View More Images from this story Visit the Photo Place

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Fish haul aims to spawn a Rappahannock revival

Day 1: Biologists harvest and fertilize shad roe from the Potomac to begin the process.

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Date published: 5/25/2008

BY FRANK DELANO

FORT BELVOIR

That's what the Pamunkey, Mattaponi, Rappahannock and other coastal Indians once called the April moon. It was a sign that the rivers were full of shad swimming upstream to spawn. The Indians filled their baskets with the fat fish and feasted by the water.

The biologists' boat was anchored two miles below Mount Vernon, where George Washington's slaves landed shad and salted them down in barrels.

The biologists also were seeking shad, but not for supper. Dean Fowler and Mike Isel work for the Shad Restoration Project of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

Their purpose that night, as well as on 15 other nights in April and May, was to collect eggs of American shad in the Potomac to restock the once vital and now nearly vanished fish in the Rappahannock River.

Processing that night's batch of eggs would take 12 days.

It continued in jars and tanks at a fish hatchery in King and Queen County. It produced 659,293 half-inch fry, as the barely visible shad larvae are called, which were released into the Rappahannock May 1 at Kelly's Ford in Culpeper County.

Dams on the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg blocked shad from reaching their upriver spawning grounds for almost 150 years.

In 2004, a great explosion of concrete and water breached Embrey Dam, built in 1910, and a wooden crib dam built in 1854. In that tumultuous instant, a shad path was opened from the sea almost to the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The state began its restocking effort in the Rappahannock in 2003. Biologists could not find enough brood stock in the Rappahannock, so they went to the Potomac for shad eggs, said T.P. Gunter Jr., the former leader of the state's shad restoration effort.

Through 2007, almost 18.7 million fry were released in the Rappahannock and its Hazel River tributary. This year, the biologists hoped to hatch and release another 4 million.

First of three parts looking at efforts to restock shad in the Rappahannock River. TODAY: Biologists harvest and fertilize shad roe from the Potomac to begin the process. TOMORROW: State's King and Queen hatchery turns eggs into fry for restocking rivers. TUESDAY: Newly hatched shad fry are released into the Rappahannock to begin their swim to the sea--and eventual return. American shad, also known as white shad or Atlantic shad, once spawned in virtually every river along the Atlantic Coast from Florida to the Bay of Fundy in Canada. Adult females can weigh up to 8 pounds; males, 4 to 5 pounds. The fish can live up to 11 years. Shad enter Virginia rivers in mid-March and leave by mid-May. After spawning, the fish return to the sea and migrate northward to summer feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine.

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Date published: 5/25/2008