arrives, he stands by doggedly till he gets just the spot he wants. 



You'll see another fellow using a nail for a sinker; he caught 

 his first shad this way, after weeks of trying, and now won't use 

 anything else. Some swear by a particular bead-and-fly combina- 

 tion and fish it ceaselessly. 



In the midst of this hectic rod-swishing and scrabbling in bead 

 boxes, one man will be fishing with stoic calm. That will be 

 Elmer Rivers, a magician among Enfield's shad fishermen. He 

 has no vast collection of baubles. His flies appear barely ade- 

 quate. Yet Elmer can take 'em when men swear there are no shad 

 in the river. 



Once, to see just how far he could carry his skill, Elmer Rivers 

 hooked, landed, and released more than a hundred shad in a 

 day's sport with a fly rod. 



It is amusing to watch other anglers watch Elmer. He is usu- 

 ally in the middle of a line, because others flank him swiftly after 

 he steps into the river. Then, after he has taken a couple, the big 

 squeeze begins and Rivers starts to feel like the center section of 

 an accordion. His casting is hampered; his tackle minutely 

 inspected. Pretty soon the whole line will be casting the same dis- 

 tance as Elmer, with the same approximate timing of the swing, 

 the same snubbing of the lure in the current. And guess who 

 keeps on catching the shad. 



But the others keep trying, for they know that to hook and 

 play this crazy cousin of the tarpon is high excitement. They 

 remember silver cartwheels in the sun, the fiddle-string tight- 

 ness of the line as it sings against the pluck of the current while a 

 6- or 7-pound berserk beauty races the river. 



They remember these things and more, and they keep on try- 

 ing because they're committed to experimenting. Shad have been 

 running east coast rivers for centuries, but men with rods have 

 barely got to know them. At Enfield, it's the bead that's king; at 

 Little Falls on the Potomac and at the St. Johns River in Florida, 

 small spoons have the come-hither. 



Who knows what they'll take next or when? What price a 

 Lilly Dache shad lure! Make it gaudy, make it crazy, and a shad 

 fisherman will try it. 



