What a January of shad fishing it has been! We managed to find and catch fish on every outing this month. The cold front moving in this weekend might have scared some of us off the water, but the shad should be fine. It will be interesting to see what February will have in store, but we need some rain to keep the fish moving!
First Shad of 2026
Deviating some from tradition, Todd and I kicked off the season with a trip out of Tosohatchee on New Year’s Day. We typically fish together New Year’s Eve, but a cold snap meant we either don our waders or push out a day and wet wade. We chose the latter. We also typically fish out of C.S. Lee this early in the season, but with the limited rain in the month of December and dropping water levels on the river, we decided to change things up.
The plan was to meet at Toso early, run upstream to check out some flats upstream of 528 in the morning in search of snipe (Ray and I had seen a lot of birds there the year before) and then fish our way back downstream throughout the day. Todd and I met up at 8am and made the drive down to the river. Powerline Road is still closed but with no recent rain, Fish Hole Road and Longbluff Road were not completely miserable. I was pleasantly surprised to see some work had been done on the road since my last visit. There are now new culverts in some of the lower lying areas of the road which will hopefully help with the flooding. That said, I finally replaced the old Jeep with a 4WD Toyota should it get messy again.
With the SR50 gage at 4.7ft, the shortcut I like to take to get to 528 was already dodgy, which meant we had to stick to the main (East) channel to get down there. In hindsight, I should have just put the outboard in low water position and sent it, but even then, we may have had to get out once or twice. We made it about halfway to 528 and spotted an area we thought should have some birds. What we found was drier ground than expected and a stiff wind that we suspect pushed the birds in to the higher grass to keep warm. While we jumped a few, and took a couple of shots, no birds came to hand. We decided pushing forward upstream was likely just going to produce more of the same at these water levels, as the elevation is every-so-slightly higher up there. Had we ventured out a week earlier, it likely would have been perfect.
We fished first junction for a bit as we found surface activity there on the way back. Swinging flies did not produce, so I worked the bend with the spinning rod and found the activity to be good numbers of nice sized specks. While always a good time, it was not the species we were after this day. Downstream we found the northwest wind had backed up the river at 7 Palms. You really want the wind from the northeast there to push bait out of the slough and fire things up, so we did not spend any real time picking apart the run. Instead, we continued downstream and fished our normal haunts. I caught a nice catfish on the fly in a deep pool that put a good bend in the single hander. We both caught panfish as well.
Further downstream we found some surface activity and got to work. It was not long before we both caught our first shad of the new year. There were good numbers of Americans there, but it was far from shooting fish in a barrel. Todd took another walk with the shotgun while I picked the run apart 5 steps at a time. Again, he jumped a couple of birds, took a couple of shots, but did not get one to hand. We both caught a few more shad a piece before making the run back upstream. We saw activity at Catfish Hotel late in the day and stopped to check it out. Upon closer inspection it was Hoplo catfish. We ended up calling it a day early enough to make it out to the main road while the sun was still up.
SPECKtacular Day on the Water
Fast forward to the following weekend, January 10th, and Todd and I met up at C.S. Lee sometime around 7:30am. With the Lake Harney gage at 2.7ft and reports on the SotF Facebook Group all week, we knew it was going to get busy. The “squeegee” of bait off the floodplain on this section of river usually begins at around 3.5ft down to somewhere around 2ft, and I have said it before, 2.8ft is about the peak of the event and my favorite time to be on the water there. Everything in the water, including shad, is gorging on gambusia and small grass shrimp. Fifty plus fish days are not abnormal across all species in the St. Johns.
We made it down to the mouth of the Econlockhatchee around 8:00 to find two boats with the same idea anchored up in the dense fog. Come to find out later on one of those boats was Brian Larsen and Suede Langston (3-time winner of the First Shad of the Season Contest.) Todd and I landed at our usual spot and got to work. It wasn’t too long before Todd hooked up on the one hander with a nice fish hugging the bank. I decided to swing flies with the switch rod and quickly found the T3 tip I had on was too heavy and I was pulling up mussels every other cast. I switched to an intermediate tip which helped, and I soon hooked up with my first of the day. Todd caught a couple more, but I struggled to find the correct combination as fish would come up to the top, here and there, and then drop back down to bottom depending on whether the wind was creating a ripple or not. They seemed to come up on the slick line when there was wind, but if it died completely, down they would go. A switch to a trusty orange and white bead chain Comet Fly did the trick and I picked up a couple more on the switch, then moved over to the one hander with a white Gamboozler tied on. White would be the color of the day, and I caught a few more before moving.
At about 10am the wind picked up ever so slightly and the activity on the other side of the river increased to a steady tempo of rises. We hopped into the canoe and crossed to put ourselves in range of the action. We both caught a couple more shad, but my attention quickly shifted to another species that was actively participating, specks. Being that we were at the peak of the squeegee, I brought a cooler to bring some fish home, and boy did I. We caught five or six in that spot but decided to move along as more and more boats arrived.
As we started to run in to Puzzle Lake, I noticed a flurry of surface activity behind a stand of tall grass outside of the main current. Figuring this was specks, we stopped to make a few casts. We spent the better part of an hour there catching speck after speck. I switched to the conventional rod and was tossing a Bobby Garland Baby Shad in white. They were tearing that thing up and it would barely hit the water sometimes before I had another fish on. Todd kept up with the fly rod and caught his fair share as well. It was silly fishing and we were cracking up like little kids. All of them were keeper sized, and between the two of us, I don’t think we ever had to throw one back because it was too small.
Interestingly, while fishing this frenzy, I managed to hook a very nice sized American Shad on the edge of the ripple line in the current. It was likely feeding on the same clouds of gambusia the specks were. This was a new location to catch shad, and nowadays that is what I am really after. I would rather catch one shad in a new spot than ten in a place I have caught them before. I have slowly built up these waypoints on my map over the last few years and they are fun spots to revisit during different conditions to see how they fish.
After catching “enough” specks, we shifted gears to snipe hunting. We continued upstream to a flat we have visited before, splitting up to cover more area. It wasn’t long before Todd was on target and shot his first of the day. I was not as lucky, as the birds I flushed were spooky and took off further than I was willing to shoot at, or over cover I knew I was never going to find them in. I had one shot up close that I completely blew. Other than that, shots were few and far between. I told Todd, “You know, I am beginning to think I am not very good at this,” he agreed, but also said the same thing about himself which both gave us a good laugh. On the walk to the boat, I found my mark as a snipe flushed 15 yards out, just on the edge of a mud puddle and it dropped like a stone. Todd was close enough to see it all go down and gave me a “way to go man!” I guess I renewed my sniper badge for the year! LOL.
Feeling a little more confident, we decided to try another spot not too far away. The moment we split, we jumped birds but did not connect. Todd went to the right, me to the left and I seemed to spook them out of every tuft of grass. This was exciting. As I started to figure that out, I approached the next tuft a little more quietly, and right on queue, off he went in a perfect left-to-right pattern. The shotgun seemed to move without thought and align its bead right where it needed to be as I pulled the trigger. The bird was dead in the air before it hit the ground and landed right on the edge of the high grass. Yes, I found it! Todd also hooked up again, no surprises there. Snipe hunting is still new to me, and from my perspective, it is still something to do on the river when the shad fishing is slow. This was a fun one though, and we both added multiple birds to the cooler.
Speaking of coolers, on the way back we found yet another spot full of specks and had to stop. Again, we caught fish after fish, and Todd even managed a double hookup on the fly. Catch of the day! We walked with a cooler full of 30 fish and the next morning full of work cleaning them.
Solo Out of Hatbill
On January 17th I ran solo out of Hatbill. With the water at 2.9ft on the SR50 gage, I hoped to find fish close to the launch. I did not. Instead, it required three ballast bags up front, a tilt pin in the rear and the outboard in high water position, and 3/4 throttle. Even then, it was a bunch of bumping bottom and hugging the cut banks. I have a love/ hate relationship with this section of river, but when it is on, it’s on. And then there is the solitude which is nice.
I made the run to first junction to see if I could find them there. This can be an amazing place to catch fish, if you can time it right. It has been many years since I have, but there is something about this spot that calls me to it. There is current, convergence, eddies, concentration and hard bottom. If you look at it on the map, it is almost like an X marks the spot fishing hole. I worked the area 5 steps at a time with the conventional, but after 30 minutes of steady work, I did not find a bite. Forget about the fly. I also saw no sign of bait in the water or in the grass.
I continued downstream a short way to where I almost always find good numbers of specks. I did not bring the cooler this day as we caught enough for a fish fry the last weekend, and the cut on my thumb from the filet knife was still tender under the Band-Aid. Surprisingly, I did not find fish here, and again the bait seemed nonexistent.
I took the west channel down to second junction and only had to pull the motor in one spot. I drifted through the last pool on the west, all the way through the junction, into the downstream run under paddle and did not see activity. I motored back to the east channel bend upstream of the slough where we normally stop. There was a perfectly light breeze coming from the northeast that should have been pushing bait out of that slough, and I figured everything would be eating. We have caught bass, panfish, shad, hybrids, etc. with these exact same conditions many times. This day I found no bait and no action. I worked from the upstream deep pool to the junction with the conventional rod, then AGAIN with the switch and found no joy.
Down I went until I reached Johnsons Bend. Here I found fish and plenty of surface activity. While there, I had three different boats stop, beach or anchor next to me which I found aggravating… at first. “You have a whole river, and have to stop here, with me? SMH!” Usually out of Hatbill, I have the whole place to myself. This is not the mouth of the Econ where folks stack up. Upon further investigation and light conversation, two of the three were speck fishermen, and while there were definitely specks there, they were not buying what they were selling. Instead, they were taking my flies while I was targeting shad, that I could clearly see feeding up top, but could not buy a bite from. Both fishermen moved on fairly quickly.
I finally figured out what the shad wanted around the time the third boat arrived. Getting the solo “hero shot” with the fish, well that was a totally different story. Aboard the third boat was the captain, another middle-aged man, and a slightly older woman. Mom, Wife? We exchanged pleasantries through waves and smiles, as I kept swinging flies, hooking up with a shad that ran and jumped almost on queue. I heard their conversations back and forth in the background above the idling motor, “here it is, one of his favorite spots on the river.” I don’t know what caught the corner of my eye, but I looked up right as the captain put the boat in neutral. As they drifted downstream, in what seemed like an instant and such a quiet moment, he opened a bag of what I quickly and wide-eyed realized, was someone’s ashes into the water as they snapped a few pictures and hugged each other. It was surreal, like watching my own future before my eyes. I am equally verklempt writing this now as I was in person that day. I have no idea who he was, and did not pry, but I knew we were in some way, eternally connected through our love for the St. Johns River.
I pulled myself together and moved downstream to one of those waypoints on my map I mentioned in the prior post, a spot not on most people’s radars, but a place that I had found shad on a different day. The airboat slides and boot prints I found there when I landed reminded me that nothing in this world is really yours, it is all a shared resource. “We mortals are just shadows and dust.” Nothing is yours to keep. If you are willing to put in the time, you can walk where I did today, tomorrow. I caught shad there while standing quite literally in someone else’s footprints, that had maybe done the same, some prior year, in mine. Again, I found it all somewhat surreal. I sat down on the cut bank, reflected in my faith, prayed for peace for that family I saw lay a loved one to rest in this river I love, had lunch, enjoyed a beer, and just took it all in before heading back to the launch. Days like these are the ones you remember forever.
Two Days of Masterclass
On January 18th and 19th, I am thankful to have been invited to fish with the master himself, Captain Mark Benson. No one knows this fishery on the St. Johns River better than him, and I learn something new from him every time I am lucky enough to step foot on his boat. Mark has become a great friend and mentor of mine over the years, and I really appreciate him sharing his many years of knowledge with me. What I learn from him I keep, so I do not have much more to report here, than we both caught American Shad and Blueback Herring and explored new parts of the river. Thank you, Mark!
If you are looking to book a guide during the shad run, you will not find a finer guide on the St. Johns River. You can contact Mark at: https://www.markbensonoutdoors.com/
January 18 was also the Shad on the Fly Meetup at the Jolly Gator. Thank you again to Bob, David, Brian, Suede, and Mark for coming out!
Lillian’s First Shad
On January 24th I ventured out of C.S. Lee for a few hours of shad fishing with my youngest daughter Lillian (age 9.) She had been dying to get out on the water with me and with the Lake Harney gage at 1.4ft (choke,) it was now or never.
We took our time in the morning, had breakfast and a cup of coffee, and were on the water around 11am. While the parking lot was full, surprisingly there were just a couple of boats on the water near the mouth of the Econ. A guy on a paddleboard (who come to find out was Alec Buchness from the SotF Facebook group) was just packing up and we pulled in behind him.
I worked with Lillian on casting her 4ft purple Zebco rod paired with a pink 33 reel as it had been a while since she last gave it a cast. I learned with my oldest daughter Evelyn that 9 years old is about the perfect age where they are patient enough to spend some time casting a 1/32 jig before actually catching something and coordinated enough to do it all themselves. It was not long before I hooked up on my conventional and I handed the rod to her to reel in. Now completely excited she began casting her rod to each swirl and rise of fish and within a half a dozen casts more, she had her own fish on. In my haste, I had left my net back at the boat, and before I could return, the fish came off the hook. She was disappointed but stuck with it.
Lillian kept the tempo up, casting, jigging, and retrieving and hooked another, even larger fish! This time my net was on my hip, and we landed the beauty above, got a few pics, revived her and sent her on her way. She lost one more and caught one more before she decided she wanted to go explore the river some more.
Originally, she wanted to head up to Culpepper Bend on the Econ as we have visited there before with her sister, but with the low water on the Econ I knew it would be a bumpy ride. Even with the outboard in low water position and her and two more ballast bags up front, the rear heavy canoe would make it a chore. Instead, I offered up a new spot I had recently found in Puzzle Lake where she might be able to catch a few more shad and a bunch of specks. She agreed, and no, I did not bring the cooler, although I was tempted. 🙂
Before we could make it to the planned destination, I spotted a scoop of 3 white pelicans in a side slough feeding, that had split off from a much larger group of pelicans I could see farther off in the distance. I slowed down and put the boat in neutral so we could observe them and as I waxed on poetically that “their wingspans can be up to 10 feet” compared to their brown cousins, and “that they are scoop feeders,” and that they are often a “sign there are fish somewhere in the area,” Lillian nodded in approval. As I finished my chronicle, the wind softened, a slickline formed, and on queue fish started to rise all around us. We pulled the canoe up on a point that will now be forever, Lillian’s Point, where we found firm bottom. We enjoyed a picnic lunch, watching all the action around us before wetting the lines again. Multiple shad were caught, including a few on the fly by Dad, in yet another new location added to the map. Sharing the experience with my daughter was the highlight of this shad run!
Last Thoughts for January
Two last thoughts for the month of January. One, I would be remiss if I did not call out the fact that there is one character missing from this month’s post, my buddy Ray Ayala. With respect to his privacy, I will just say that Ray is recovering from a surgery. I have missed fishing with him this month but talk to him at least weekly. Keep him in your prayers, that he may have a speedy recovery. Ray has some big things coming, and I can’t wait to get back out on the water with him!
Two, I can’t help but say it feels more like the end of February, not January with these water levels. Pray for rain but get out there and fish!
What a beautiful write-up. Cheers.