Fishing for a Solution: The State Hopes to Help Shad Repopulate the Schuylkill River

By Darrin Youker, Reading Eagle, Pa.

Mar. 24–Every year since 1999, scientists from the state Fish and Boat Commission have waded into the Schuylkill River near Reading dragging bags of wriggling shad fry with them.

Hundreds of thousands of shad are released into the river, destined for Philadelphia and the Atlantic Ocean beyond.

When these tiny shad mature, many will try to fulfill an ingrained desire to swim back to our area to spawn.

Most will never make it.

Dams near Philadelphia prevent most returning shad from making it all but a few miles upstream from the mouth of the Schuylkill River.

American shad fry released at Reading are tagged before they’re released into the Schuylkill, said Michael Hendricks, a fisheries biologist with the state Fish and Boat Commission.

About 95 percent of shad caught at the Fairmount Dam in Philadelphia — the first impoundment in the river — are those released by the state at Reading, he said.

Those shad are trying to return after maturing in the Atlantic Ocean, Hendricks said.

Now, the state hopes to figure out a way to help the shad get back to Reading.

Despite the presence of a fish ladder, designed to help move the fish over the dam breast, American shad seem unable to maneuver through the passage, Hendricks said.

"We find more and more that they (the ladders) do not work," Hendricks said. "There is no alternative at this point."

Still, the Fish and Boat Commission continue releasing the shad each year hoping the famed game fish will find their way back to native waters.

The Schuylkill River once teemed with shad. It was the most abundant fish on the East Coast, relied upon by Native Americans and European settlers for food.

The only way to return shad to their historic numbers — where seemingly countless numbers swam to the upper Schuylkill to spawn — would be to remove the dams that block their progress, said David Kristine, a fisheries biologist with the Fish and Boat Commission.

But that is an unrealistic option, Kristine said. Several dams on the river are used for municipal water collection points and for recreation, he said.

But the state is either removing dams that no longer hold backwater, such as the former Felix Dam north of Reading, or installing fish passages that will improve fish migration, Kristine said.

The problem of dams blocking the shad migration from the ocean to freshwater spawning areas is not unique to the Schuylkill River, Kristine said.

"Shad have a range from Florida to Maine," he said. "A lot of the rivers they spawn in have dams."

This year, the Philadelphia Water Department, which owns Fairmount Dam, is building a new fish passage that may get more shad through the impoundment, Hendricks said. Only time will tell if the new design works, he said.

"Fairmount Dam has not been effective in recent years," Hendricks said, noting that its fish passage is clogged with debris.

That passage creates turbulence, which confounds the shad, Hendricks said. It remains to be seen if the new design will be more conducive to the migration.

But there is no money available to test new technology for shad migration, Hendricks said.

"We are kind of shooting in the dark at this point," he said.

Similar upgrades are planned for four more dams on the lower section of the river, Kristine said. Two others are slated for removal in the next two years, he said.

Felix Dam in Muhlenberg Township, which breached in 1999 when the river swelled from the heavy rains of Tropical Storm Floyd, was dismantled late last year.

The efforts to restore shad migration played a role in the decision to tear down the structure, Kristine said.

By 2020, the state wants to have a self-sustaining population of shad that can migrate from the Atlantic Ocean to Hamburg, Hendricks said. The success of the effort depends in large part on the performance of the new fish passages, he said.

"Shad were an important part of the ecology of the river," Hendricks said. "It is our obligation to restore them to the river."

Todd Hess, a Mount Penn fisherman, drives more than an hour to fish for shad each spring in the Delaware River. Hess said he’d jump at the chance to go after shad in the Schuylkill.

"I’d like to see it happen in my lifetime," he said.

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