It was late February and the snow was falling when my wife Julie and I slipped our Aquapod skiffs into the river on the upstream side of the bridge and went to work cast-netting a short bucket of gizzard shad—a task that didn’t take long.
Tying off gunwale-to-gunwale to an old snag in two feet of frigid, murky water, we baited No. 4 Eagle Claws with fresh shad innards and made our first casts of the New Year.
Within 60 seconds, if that, Julie’s Lamiglas bent into an arc as a wide, silver-gray tail slapped the surface 20 feet away. It wasn’t long before a gorgeous 3-pound