Hickory shad is a migratory

Fish migration

Many types of fish migrate on a regular basis, on time scales ranging from daily to annually or longer, and over distances ranging from a few metres to thousands of kilometres...

 clupeid

Clupeidae

Clupeidae is the family of the herrings, shads, sardines, hilsa and menhadens. It includes many of the most important food fishes in the world.-Description and biology:...

 fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

 species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 native to the East Coast of the United States

East Coast of the United States

The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...

.

Distribution, habitat, and life history

Hickory shad range from Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 to Maine

Maine

Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...

, with largest populations occurring in Chesapeake Bay

Chesapeake Bay

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay's drainage basin covers in the District of Columbia and parts of six states: New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West...

 and coastal North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

. It is a schooling

Shoaling and schooling

In biology, any group of fish that stay together for social reasons are said to be shoaling , and if, in addition, the group is swimming in the same direction in a coordinated manner, they are said to be schooling . In common usage, the terms are sometimes used rather loosely...

 anadromous species that inhabits marine waters, probably never far from land. Adults enter estuaries

Estuary

An estuary is a partly enclosed coastal body of water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea....

 and freshwater

Freshwater

Fresh water is naturally occurring water on the Earth's surface in ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, bogs, ponds, lakes, rivers and streams, and underground as groundwater in aquifers and underground streams. Fresh water is generally characterized by having low concentrations of dissolved salts and...

 tributaries

Tributary

A tributary or affluent is a stream or river that flows into a main stem river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean...

 to spawn

Spawn (biology)

Spawn refers to the eggs and sperm released or deposited, usually into water, by aquatic animals. As a verb, spawn refers to the process of releasing the eggs and sperm, also called spawning...

 during the spring. The oceanic movements of this species are unknown, and little is known concerning their migration (Hardy 1978; Cooper 1983; Rulifson 1994). Spawning occurs in February through June, earlier with decreasing latitude

Latitude

In geography, the latitude of a location on the Earth is the angular distance of that location south or north of the Equator. The latitude is an angle, and is usually measured in degrees . The equator has a latitude of 0°, the North pole has a latitude of 90° north , and the South pole has a...

 (Hardy 1978). The slightly adhesive and demersal eggs

Egg (biology)

An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. In most birds, reptiles, insects, molluscs, fish, and monotremes, an egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing...

, approximately 1 mm in diameter, appear to be dispersed at random over gravel bars

Bar (river morphology)

A bar in a river is an elevated region of sediment that has been deposited by the flow. Types of bars include mid-channel bars , point bars , and mouth bars...

 in moderate current

Current (stream)

A current, in a river or stream, is the flow of water influenced by gravity as the water moves downhill to reduce its potential energy. The current varies spatially as well as temporally within the stream, dependent upon the flow volume of water, stream gradient, and channel geometrics...

. After water hardening, the eggs become semi-buoyant and develop as they drift along the bottom (Mansueti 1962; Hardy 1978; Cooper 1983). Fecundity ranges from 43,000 – 475,000 eggs per female, and, although there are data on the developmental stages of eggs, larvae, and juveniles, little is known concerning the distribution, ecology, and growth rates of juvenile hickory shad (Mansueti 1962; Hardy 1978).

Males and females mature at 2-4 years and often exhibit traits of repeat spawning. Adults average about 380 mm in the Chesapeake Bay, and 342 mm FL (males) and 366 mm FL (females) in North Carolina (Murauskas, unpublished data; Collette and Klein-MacPhee 2002). Hickory shad are among the most piscivorous

Piscivore

A piscivore is a carnivorous animal which eats primarily fish. Piscivory was the diet of early tetrapods , insectivory came next, then in time reptiles added herbivory....

 clupeids, feeding primarily on small fishes, although crustacean

Crustacean

Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...

s and squid

Squid

Squid are cephalopods of the order Teuthida, which comprises around 300 species. Like all other cephalopods, squid have a distinct head, bilateral symmetry, a mantle, and arms. Squid, like cuttlefish, have eight arms arranged in pairs and two, usually longer, tentacles...

 contribute to their diet (Cooper 1983; Collette and Klein-MacPhee 2002). Hickory shad have a relatively low commercial value; however, there is an increasingly popular recreational fishery throughout the mid-Atlantic states

Mid-Atlantic States

The Mid-Atlantic states, also called middle Atlantic states or simply the mid Atlantic, form a region of the United States generally located between New England and the South...

.

Recreational fishery

Recreational shad fishing has become increasingly popular in recent years. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, hickory shad articles appeared in sport fishing magazines. Headlines such as “the tough fighting hickory shad swarm near the rock-studded fall line…” (Sports Afield 1988), and “feast on Rappahannock River hickory shad action” (Field & Stream 1992) brought attention to the fishery. Subsequently, specialty magazines (Fly Fisherman 2002) and sports sections in national newspapers (i.e., The Washington Post, 1988, 2000) began proclaiming the excitement of hickory shad fishing (“HICKORY SHAD ARE RUNNING!”) and the recovery of the fishery. In the two most recent years of a North Carolina creel survey (2004-2005), hickory shad – a fish only present for two months of the year – moved from sixth to the fourth most targeted fish by coastal anglers (Murauskas and Mumford 2006).

Literature

Among the reputable publications that exist include federal and state documents and management plans, and degree program theses from few universities. Federal publications include reports from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Shad and River Herring (ASMFC 1999; ASMFC 2001). Some state-level publications exist for shad and herring management efforts, such as North Carolina’s Shad and River Herring Fisheries and Monitoring Programs (NCDMF and NCWRC 2004). Connecticut (Gephard and McMenemy 2004), Pennsylvania, Maryland (Chesapeake Bay Agreement 2000), South Carolina, Georgia (Ulrich et al. 1979), and Florida (McBride 2000) also have implemented fishery management and monitoring programs for Alosa species. Georgia produced reports in the 1960s and 1970s regarding life history aspects of hickory shad (Street and Adams 1969) and Altamaha River shads (Street 1969). Florida has river-specific management efforts for diadromous fishes in the St. John’s River (Harris and McBride 2004). A few publications address coast-wide and/or genus-level stock status and management issues (Rulifson 1994; Yako et al. 2002). The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a useful series that includes egg, larvae, and juvenile development descriptions of hickory shad (Hardy 1978). Only three Master of Science theses were located. Pate (North Carolina State University, 1972) characterized life history aspects of hickory shad, as did Batsavage (East Carolina University, 1997) and Watkinson (Virginia Commonwealth University, 2004).

Although hickory shad research has been limited, other clupeids, especially Alosa species in the United States, have received comparatively substantial attention (e.g., Limburg and Waldman 2003). A similar alosine the region, American shad (A. sapidissima), has been frequently studied (Atkinson 1951; Dodson and Dohse 1984; Melvin et al. 1986; Quinn and Adams 1996; Leonard and McCormick 1999a, 1999b; Leonard et al. 1999; Waters et al. 2000; Limburg and Waldman 2003). Further, an overwhelming amount of related information exists on fish migration, bioenergetics, reproduction, physiology, and other related topics.