Rolling on the River

March is always a welcome time of year for me.  As the cold of January and February gives way, and the trees begin to bloom, the urge to spend more time outdoors takes over.  Along with warmer weather and daylight savings time, one of my favorite parts of early spring is the shad run in the local rivers.  I've fished several coastal rivers for shad over the last few years, but the Roanoke is always my favorite.  The Roanoke is beautiful during the spring, and the quality of fishing is hard to beat.

A few weeks back I made plans to hit the river with Kristen Cook and Suzanne Craig as soon as the fish arrived in decent numbers.  The weather and the fish came together for us, so I hooked up my skiff, picked up my guests and we made our way to the town of Weldon.  With a lack of rain, the river was lower than normal, and there were a lot of rocks exposed or just below the surface.  I launched the skiff and we carefully made our way around the rocks and started our drift down the river.

A few hundred yards down the river we ran into a few friends anchored up on a school of shad.  We anchored just upstream of them and caught a few fish before moving down river to find another school.  We continued with the standard procedure of drifting down river and anchoring after we hooked into a fish.  The shad travel in groups, so if you hook one you can usually catch many more in the same area.  If a school moves on, then you just drift again until you find more fish.  There are also several spots on the river where fish like to hang out.  Changes in the shoreline or areas around rocks will usually break up the flow of the river and give the fish somewhere to hang. 

For the most part, I threw flashy marabou and estaz flies with a 5wt rod and a sinking line.  Suzanne and Kristen mixed it up between curly tail grubs and spoons, both of which produced.  Towards the end of the day, Suzanne picked up a fly rod for the second time ever.  I talked her through casting a sinking line, and her determination to stick with it paid off in the end. 

We didn't have a triple digit day on fish but we did pretty well.  Kristen and Suzanne are always a blast to have on the boat, and there's no better place to be in March than floating down the Roanoke.