The shad run is fleeting, beginning in the northeast in late April and ending by early June.

The shad run was nearly wiped out in the 1950's because there was so little oxygen in the stretch around Camden that the fish could not survive it.

During the shad spawning run, multiple species of shad run together.

East of Portland, the Bonneville Dam poses a significant obstacle to the Columbia River's shad run.

American shad runs have retained at least a fraction of their former abundance, and smallmouth bass, sunfish, and pike populations are healthy enough to support angling.

The extremely large shad runs are often cited as an example of why the lower Columbia River has such a large population of Sturgeon.

I reflected how nicely nature bookends the shad run.

THE annual shad run, which people in the Northeast associate with spring, actually begins in December as far south as the St. Johns River in northern Florida.

By early May, the local shad run is steady enough to invite shad fries along the mid-Hudson, which remains, despite dwindling stocks, one of the most productive shad rivers in the United States.

But the shad run has been interrupted by a paradoxical legacy of the river's grimy past - the striped bass.