The question, to begin with, is whether a shad dart should actually be considered a fly. Noted shad aficionado John McPhee argues in his monumental work The Founding Fish that casting a shad dart with a fly rod isn’t fly fishing, but instead, he would say, shad fishing with a fly rod. Does the distinction matter? At a moment in the sport’s history when epoxy-bodied jigs with tungsten heads are all the rage or some fly fishers find it acceptable to employ a toothpick to “pin” a plastic bead to their leader just above the hook while angling for anadromous egg-eating fish, it’s pretty hard to claim the moral high ground just because some anglers include a thirty-second or a sixteenth or even an eighth of an ounce of lead in their so-called flies. McPhee contends that a shad fly is a “furry, bead-eyed product, not a little drop of lead.” On the West Coast, the type has long been associated with the chenille-bodied and bead-chain-eyed Boss and Comet, for decades sold out of the late Grant King’s fly shop in Guerneville on the Russian River. But in reality, should you go in for American shad in any serious way, you’ll find it fairly easy to agree with Delaware River fishing guide Michael Padua, whom McPhee quotes as saying, “You can catch shad on just about anything.”
On the other hand, the fact that McPhee, who clearly loves his fly fishing as much as any hidebound traditionalist, makes this sharp distinction between flies and darts and what we’re doing with them should alert us to the notion that there’s something fishy, dare I say, when we tie a shad dart to our tippet or leader.
I’m not sure I entirely agree. You’ve heard this discussion many times before. Without delving into it deeply, I’ll just repeat the argument that if you’re angling with a fly rod, a fly reel, and a fly line, with something handmade affixed to the end of your leader, you’re probably doing something close enough to genuine fly fishing to call it such, although I do think you should stop short of impaling a night crawler to your fly hook if you’re really trying to claim allegiance to the game.
That said, who gives a switch what you call it, as long as you’re safe, legal, and having fun.
I came to shad darts slowly. After a couple of half hearted, unsuccessful attempts fishing for shad on my own, I finally coaxed my pal Fred Trujillo to point me in the right direction. Fred’s a professional tyer; I was surprised, after showing up with a collection Grant King–style flies, that Fred favored “patterns” that were little more than painted lead-headed jigs with very little in the way of materials actually tied to the hook shank. We fished 8-weight and 9-weight single-handed rods, mostly because we didn’t have anything between those sizes and our trout gear, and we caught plenty of shad, although no doubt Fred brought two or three to hand to each one of mine.
Neither of us, however, came close to the numbers the guys with light spinning gear racked up all around us.
Convinced I could do better, I devised a f ly consisting of a Krystal Flash tail, a chartreuse chenille body, and a bright orange conehead. The fly produced more consistently than Fred’s all but naked patterns, although I was pretty sure that any increased success had more to do with learning the subtleties of presentation and detecting the shad’s gentle take rather than any magic I had stumbled upon with my simple, artless design. I fished that pattern for years, even after I started casting a two-handed rod for shad, another move that improved my numbers while leaving me far short of what the light-tackle spin fishers seemed capable of.
I think I read The Founding Fish twice, all the way through, before it occurred to me to try to track down some genuine shad darts and see what they might do for me. They were harder to find than you might imagine. A lot of places in my neck of the woods sold something they called shad darts. But they were nearly all just standard lead-headed jigs — a bare hook with a painted, pea-sized ball of lead cast just below a hook eye that extends at a ninety-degree angle up from the shank.
Again, I felt I managed to increase my catch with flies fashioned on this style of hook, the same style Fred had originally introduced me to. I used Krystal Flash or Flashabou for a tail, covered the bare hook with tinsel and a few evenly spaced turns of wire to keep the body from falling apart, and added a wrap or two of chenille, or even peacock herl, directly behind the ball-like lead head, generally painted chartreuse.
But what about the real deal? “Essentially all shad darts,” writes McPhee, “are homemade. If you don’t make your own, you buy darts that some one (else) made at home.” I finally bought mine online, from a lure manufacturer in Pennsylvania. They required I buy no fewer than 50 shad darts at a time, a fairly substantial investment, but one I was happy to make after searching so long for the genuine article.
Are they? “The quality of shad darts,” notes McPhee, “is as varied as the quality of organic fruit.” He continues: “On this planet, there may be fewer languages than varieties of shad darts.” The ones I splurged for, a hundred in all, looked just like the hand-drawn image in McPhee’s book. More to the point, this past season, with my new, simple, genuine, one-sixteenth-ounce shad darts, cast with a 12foot 6-inch 6-weight two-hander and a sink-tip Skagit head, I clobbered the shad. Is it the dart that did the trick? Anybody who reads this column with any frequency knows that I’m loath to accept claims that rest on the argument that a fly pattern of any sort is the difference between failure and success. What I discovered with the shape and weight of the classic shad dart, however, was that I was able to swing my offering on a long, light leader — 12 to 15 feet of 4-pound-test fluorocarbon, say — and while keeping it clear of the bottom, I also could keep the dart swimming in the current and then feel the very soft and very subtle take that characterizes the so-called shad strike.
Presentation, no doubt, is the name of the game. And after decades and decades of fishing for these plankton-eating anadromous fish — fish bent on reproduction, for the moment, rather than nutritional needs — traditional eastern seaboard shad anglers, you have to believe, have learned a thing or two. The shad dart is their answer.
Why reinvent the wheel? Still, since I’m the sort of fellow who builds his boats rather than buys them, who ties his own flies, and as often as possible grows his own tomatoes, I see no reason not to fashion my own shad darts. If, as McPhee claims, they are all “homemade” anyway, why should I turn the job over to someone else — especially if there’s an opportunity to learn how to work in a new and unusual medium?
Lead, need I say, is nobody’s best friend. And if you’re really fearful of it or you think it has no place in the world today, then my apologies — you should skip the rest of this column and go find whatever other interesting articles our publisher has in store for us in this issue. But the fact is, there are attributes to lead that nothing else in the natural world can match, and if you handle it carefully and use it sensibly, I don’t suspect there’s any more danger or harmful effects involved than driving your car to the nearest grocery store.
Lead is probably the most recycled of all metals. Because of its low melting point and its refusal to rust, it rarely ends up in a landfill. More significantly, the ease with which it can be heated and poured into molds and then also shaped with simple woodworking tools, coupled with its high weight-to-volume ratio, makes it ideal for, say, sailboat keels, diving weights, and of course, split shot.
And shad darts. I’ve made mine in molds built and sold by the Do-It Mold company out of Denver, Iowa. Mold model JD-8-1618 gives you one-eighth-ounce and one-sixteenth-ounce darts, the most useful sizes and weights where I fish, although I wouldn’t discount the tiny (one-thirty-second-ounce and one-sixty-fourth-ounce) darts that come out of the model JD-8-3264, especially if I fished for shad in shallow, low-gradient rivers meandering along valley floors. I’ve been a cautious fan of lead ever since fashioning a lineup of heavy spiling ducks, the weights used to hold and adjust wood battens when drawing the various curved lines involved in lofting a boat — converting scaled-down drawings to full size. Among other small jobs using melted lead, I’ve also poured a 300-pound slotted keel for Tamalita, my newest boat, a challenging, yet in the end thrilling project, although one I’m glad I don’t have to tackle too often.
My point is, I had experience working with lead before I tackled my first shad darts. That said, casting your own shad darts with melted lead is pretty darn easy. The Do-It Mold website has a wealth of how-to videos, and as long as you know how to work safely around, say, sharp shop tools or keep your wits about you in a busy kitchen, you won’t have any trouble fashioning your darts. And if you don’t want to go fully into the do-it-yourself process of melting and pouring lead, you can find unpainted shad dart bodies available for purchase online.
Materials
Hook: Eagle Claw 570 or 575, sizes 1 to 4
Body: Molded lead cast in Do-It Mold JD-8-1618
Paint: Powder paint, various colors
Thread: Ultra Thread 70 denier, or similar, color appropriate to the painted dart
Tail: White or chartreuse bucktail, Sea Hair, or similar
Tying Instructions
Step 1: You need some lead. Used to be you could stop by your local tire shop and collect a bucket of used wheel weights. Not anymore — lead’s worth far too much to give away. Still, it’s not hard to find: divers, plumbers, home remodelers. You want “soft” lead, which is the purest kind, not an alloy, and thus has the lowest melting point. You can always buy a five-pound ingot from Ace Hardware for about $25, enough to cast a thousand or so darts, depending on the size you want.
Besides your Do-It Mold, you’ll also need a heat source (I use an old rusted single-burner camp stove), a crucible (a small, heavy cast-iron pot), and a ladle. Safety equipment includes gloves and goggles. Work outdoors or in a well-ventilated shop or garage. Don’t boil the lead, and don’t breathe any fumes. Any equipment used for working with lead should never get used for any other jobs, especially those, need I say, in the kitchen.
That said, take a moment to watch a video or two.
Before I actually start casting the dart bodies, I first heat up the mold. To do that, with it closed, but without any hooks in it, I ladle lead into each receptacle. Then I open the mold, and with pliers, I lift out the hardened lead (careful, it’s still hot) and set it back in the melting pot. Once the aluminum mold has warmed up, set the appropriate jig hooks in the casting receptacles, close the mold (it won’t shut completely if any of the hooks are misaligned), and ladle lead into each of the openings. Once you start with the ladle, don’t stop until the lead overflows; if you start and pause, the lead immediately hardens, and no more can f low into where you want it. The good news about lead, of course, is any jig or pour you aren’t happy with, you can just lift the lead from the mold, put it back in the melting pot, and try again.
Step 2: Remove the dart bodies (the hooks are now in place) from the mold with pliers, being careful not to bend the light-wire hooks or hook eyes. Use a pair of wire dykes to free each dart from the overflow lead. Set the overflow material back in the melting pot. If there’s any excess material or an uneven surface at the forward end of the body, simply file it away or carefully flatten it using a sanding disc or belt sander.
Step 3: Your darts are ready to paint. Instead of using regular paint, we’re going to powdercoat the dart like a car chassis for durability. Hold the dart by the hook with a pair of pliers. Heat the body of the dart with a heat gun, hair dryer, or at the risk of melting the lead off of the hook, a small soldering torch. I prefer a heat gun. Warm up the body, then dip the lead body into an open jar of powder paint. If the body is hot enough, the powder will stick; if you can see lead, reheat and try again. Once powder covers the dart body, continue heating the lead as the powder melts and eventually creates an even coat. If you want to add a color to the face of the dart, dip it into another powder color and then continue heating with the heat gun until the entire surface of the dart is smooth. Before setting aside a dart, however, check to see that the hook eye is clear. Slide a sewing pin or thin wire through the eye to clear any paint. Do it now — before the paint hardens.
Step 4: Hang the dart on some sort of wire rack. When you are finished casting the bodies and applying the paint, it’s a good idea to bake the darts for twenty minutes in an oven heated to just 250 degrees. Somewhere McPhee makes the comparison between shad darts hitting rocks on the bottom of a river and a basketball hitting the court floor. You want to do everything you can to keep the paint on your pretty darts.
Step 5: Once the dart has cooled, affix the hook of the dart in your tying vise, start the thread aft of the painted body, and tie in a tail about equal the length of the body. Bucktail was the traditional tailing material for shad darts. Now I nearly always see plastic tails on them. Why not? Plastic is more durable — and if you’re catching shad by the dozen, that matters.
Step 6: Whip finish aft of the dart body. Saturate the thread wraps with lacquer, your favorite head cement, or UV-activated resin. (See the image on page16 for the results of steps 5 and 6.)
