State

Two men cun lay 100 feel of shad net straight across the Cape Fear. One man alone gets a nearly straight cast up and down river; corrects the proper right-angle cast hy holding hoat-end of net still until first-cast end drifts bv. (Photos by llcininer.) Fishing For Shad on the Cape Fear It's not only an idyllic* sport but it pays biji dividends so far as {food eat¬ ing' is eon cer ned. Sliatl fishiii*»' on flu* Cape Fear is now at its height. Ity K. (Will, SI\K Elizabethtown. N. C. When the winter's been more than a man can bear, and it's a long time yet to poke sallet time: when his spirit's down and his innards weary it’s shad time on the Cape Fear River. From mid-February to middle May. shy spawning shad ease up the ships' channel 50 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to 1л>ск Num¬ ber One. 20 miles below this half¬ way port on North Carolina’s long¬ est inland river waterway. If the water is muddy-clear they swim deep if it's muddy-plumb they addle out of sight just under the turgid surface. In either case the only way to get them is with a shad net. 50 to 100 feet. 5'i* inch mesh gill net. a contraption developed over the years to take advantage of a spawn¬ ing shad’s habit of reversing its course on striking an obstacle (thus entangling tins* and to set up the most enjoyable fishing yet devised by man. For a March catch of may¬ be seven .'{-pound fat shad, includ¬ ing (if they are roes* seven pounds of shad-roe, a properly stalled shad fishing expedition takes three hours of Hunting down the river. 15 minutes of power-boating back up again. Of course, in March and April, when the big run is on. this busi¬ ness of pulling maybe 30 or 40 fish out of the net can get to be work. But with a guide like Tube Gill (03 year old Negro who "never did do nothin' but fish, and won’t so long's catfish sells at 35 cents a pound’’*. Cape Fear shadfishing out of Elizabethtown is a day-long idyll of floating the river and lazy- ing in the hammock on the shad shack porch waiting the call to shad-nnd-roe that forgets the sad winter and makes any kind of spring hopeful. Shad fishing is strictly a stag af¬ fair on the middle Cape Fear; shad- and-roe eating, on the other hand and in warm April weather, is often a community event. Like¬ wise. riverside eating is strictly man's privilege, whether it's di¬ rectly on the banks or in the tiny shad shack on the bluff above. For a March party when the river is low and muddv-clear and the shad a-lazying up waiting for the right moon two boats with two men each are enough to add to the half-dozen likely already on the river. Good companions, besides Tube, should be good fishmen first, like Manley George, theatre own¬ er. and Morris Woodhouse. farmer when shad isn't running; and good talkers, like say Norman McCul¬ loch. newspaper publisher. Strictly for the eating, a county sheriff, a municipal judge, an oil jobber or two. and a soft-drink bottler help immensely. A big-enough boat can be toted down the steep steps at the lock site; Ruby Squires, keeper of the lock, generally can round up one of the slender, pointed, squnre-cut- at-both-ends Cape Fear canoes — tricky for amateurs but easily handled in the currents. The dif¬ ference between an outing and an outrageously hard job of work will be the outboard motor brought along or rented if possible. (As Tobe says: "Gasoline is much less wearing than musclelcnc."> At high water there’s a boat pier, in February a sandy beach. One man can handle boat and net. two sensible men will balance much better and get the net over¬ side in a neat line, buoyed at each end by cypress float stakes and in the middle by ten 4-inch squares rigged as (diamond) floats. Down¬ stream. your "shad drift" cast is just that, with the net spread out beside the boat, one fisherman manning a guide oar or pole, the other holding the net line tight. Just as surely you'll make only one shad drift cast in your whole life if you left the outboard motor at home. Downstream for a mile around the second bend is one hour of piscatorial seventh heaven, shad or no shad. Upstream again for another east is four minutes by hard-duty motor — by paddle it is two-and-a-half hours of excruciat¬ ing muscle-torture which doesn’t really hurt until you stop rowing; by pole it's a bent back for the rest of a natural life, whatever age attempts it. But even so, and even if only one shad comes to your SI 3 net. one drift cast on the river is worth- THE STATE. April 2. 1949