Credit: (Andrew S. Lewis)
For Steve Meserve of the Lewis Fishery, the preferred method of setting the seine is by rowing, because he has found that a motor affects the shad hauls.
Steve Meserve wasn’t feeling optimistic. A storm front had moved in overnight and a cold, west-northwest wind was running down the river. The 54-degree water temperature, he said, “makes the shad want to sit down in an eddy somewhere and wait for warmer weather.”
But here in Lambertville, on a wide and deep reach of the Delaware River, this spring’s shad run has been good, even promising. As they have done most every night from late March through May since 1888, fishermen from Lewis Fishery slipped on hip waders and prepared a battered flat-bottom and seine for the evening’s haul.