Five minutes with Steve Meserve, among the last of the great shad men

This weekend, the little community of Lambertville on the Delaware River holds its annual celebration of the American shad. The bony beauty is now in the midst of its springtime spawning run from the Atlantic to freshwater reaches as far as southern New York. Steve Meserve is the fourth generation of his family to trawl for shad from Lambertville’s Lewis Island. He and his family members are all that remain of what was once a robust commercial fishery along the river that hauled in more than 3 million shad a year. Today, Meserve plies the family tradition not for money, but for the love of the river, of nature, and the fish that fascinated his forebears. His data on the annual shad haul is prized by the state Division of Fish and Wildlife and other agencies that chart continuing environmental threats to the Delaware. He spoke with The Jersey Vindicator this week.

Q: Has this been a good year for shad?
A: We’ve had some very, very good little hauls this year so far, and we’re still in the midst of our season. We’ll probably be fishing up to the second week in May, until it starts to get too warm and the run tails off. We caught our first shad this year on April 2. Then we started seeing the numbers go up. On Monday, April 21, we took in 142, which, according to our records, is the fourth-biggest haul since 2003. The biggest one-day haul we ever recorded was in 1963 with 443 shad, but that was really unusual because at that time, there was so much pollution in the river that not a lot of fish were even making it up this far. But when you haul in a net, you never really know if the fish will be there. The weather can work against us. The river can work against us. The gear can get hung up. So you never know.

Q: How long has your family been tracking the Delaware shad run?
A: We’ve got records going as far back as the 1890s as far as total catch. Starting in about 1925 or 1926, we’ve got detailed records that can tell you how many days we went out, how many shad we caught. Later on, we started keeping track of other fish that came up in the nets, what we saved, what we threw back.

Q: Do you sell shad?
A: The fishery isn’t here to make money. We don’t sell to restaurants. Back at the turn of the 20th century, fisheries on the Delaware would keep everything they caught because it could be sold locally or to markets in Philadelphia and New York. People can still buy fish from us if they come down to the river when we’re hauling in the nets. But it’s small. There used to be commercial fisheries up and down the river. A lot of factory towns like Lambertville had one. But there’s no market for shad anymore. Eels? A huge market. There are a lot of eelers on the river. People will pay for eels.

Q: Why does your family still carry on this tradition?
A: Well, there’s a long history, and we feel it’s important to keep it going. My great-great-grandfather [Bill Lewis] took over a commercial fishery that was already here. He caught something like 10,000 shad in 1896 and could make decent money during the season. The rest of the time, he was a carpenter. By the First World War, there were already a lot of factories and pollution, and the population really dropped. At different times, there was so little oxygen in the river that shad just suffocated trying to get past Philadelphia. There were years in the 1950s when we didn’t catch a single shad. My grandfather stuck with it because, like he said, somebody had to be the eyes and ears of the shad. He helped push for new laws and changes to protect the river, and things eventually got better. By the late 1970s, shad hauls were pretty good again.

Q: What are the continuing threats to shad in the Delaware?
A: Unfortunately, we’re seeing a lot of new pressures on the fishery over the last 25 to 30 years. One thing is that cleaner water has brought more predatory species. Striped bass, for example, are no friend to shad. They love to eat the shad fry. We’re also seeing wide swings in the river from high water to extended drought. This kind of extreme swing with weather changes can cause havoc. Out in the ocean, shad are swept up in big commercial trawler sweeps and many don’t survive that.

Q: Where is Lambertville on the shad’s journey?
A: They’ve been living for three to five years out in the ocean, now they’re heading back to the rivers and streams where they were spawned. The upper Delaware. The Lehigh. The Musconetcong. You’ll see them as far up as Hancock, New York, even farther. By the time they hit Lambertville, they’ve pretty much stopped eating and are working off their body fat they accumulated out in the ocean. As they swim upriver and the water gets warmer, they start moving at a funkier pace. The river starts to get too low. Right around here, from Scudder Falls up to about Bulls Island, is supposed to be the sweet spot for roe shad.

Q: What’s the ideal shad?
A: Females are definitely more sought after than bucks. They’re bigger and carry more fat. Ideally, they will be swollen with eggs. They’ll have big swollen bellies. It’s hard to tell when the female is perfectly ripened. A good egg sac is red or orange. Once it turns kind of translucent, the eggs have developed too much to be considered the best for eating. If I could catch a shad that’s at least 5 pounds, that’s great. The record is 11 pounds in New Jersey.

Q: How does one cook a shad?
A: We had shad for Easter. I just threw it on the gas grill with a little olive oil. It was delicious. Of course, not everyone likes it. It’s not your typical fish with flaky white flesh. It’s, let’s say, got a more robust flavor that really takes well to smoking, which is my favorite way to prepare it. Very tasty.

Q: What about the bones?
A: Well, people always complain about the bones. Everybody has a different method of dealing with them. There are guys who make like 13 precise cuts to remove the bigger bones and then use tweezers for the last 2 percent. But if you take out too many bones, you lose too much flesh. Some people bake it in the oven until the bones melt, but that’s no good because you just end up with mush. There are some recipes I’ve had that call for stuffing the shad with cornbread or shrimp. Let me tell you, that’s just wonderful.

Q: Do you eat the shad roe?
A: Are you kidding? You can saute it. Smoke it. Scramble it. You can wrap it in bacon and toss it on the grill. What I like to do is break open the roe sack and mix it in with chicken eggs — eggs and eggs. Breakfast, dinner. You name it.