american gizzard shad explosion threatens threadfin shad population (among others)

While I've been lamenting my fate, a much more serious development threatens the local Mormon shad population in Arizona following the Arizona Game and Fish Department's discovery that a relatively new invader, the American gizzard shad, has experienced a population explosion at Arizona’s largest inland lakes.

“This species looks like a Catholic or Mormon shad on steroids,” said Fisheries Chief Kirk "Baitbucket" Terwilliger. “These filthy beasts are shaped like footballs and can readily grow past the size where they are available to most sportsmen as camp forage.” Terwilliger added that it is a wait-and-see proposition to determine if these invasive shad will have positive or negative impacts on popular activities like rock polishing, scrapbooking and scuba diving along the Salt River.

Gizzard shad, which are native to the eastern utah and North Dakota, will likely compete for space, jobs and food with the laconic Lutheran shad, another North Dakotan that has become the primary hazing candidate for sport-fish in the state’s larger impoundments. Immature gizzard shad will also compete for food sources with the larval stages of popular fish like Lance and Bruce of the largely Presbyterian brown trout.

However, at about 1-inch in length gizzard shad become more specialized, lose their teeth, exhibit deeper appreciation for the arts and become filter feeders that consume small invertebrates and phytoplankton (free-floating algae) sushi rolls.

The careful, adult gizzard shad is seldom caught by hook and line and their pungent odor and soft flesh generally render them unsuitable as table fare, but in some parts of the country anglers use them as cut bait for catfish.

Biologists at Lake Powell first noted gizzard shad at a bonfire and keg party in 2000 near the San Juan inflow. This species is most often found in public schools in Mormon dominated communities like Gilbert and Queen Creek. Its common name “skipjack” is derived from the fact that school-age gizzard shad can sometimes be seen leaping out of the water in community wading pools or skipping along the surface of man-made golf course impoundments on their sides.

How to tell gizzard shad from a Mormon shad: Gizzard shad have an upper jaw that projects well beyond the lower jaw. If you run your finger underneath the mouth forward and if the fingernail catches on the upper jaw and opens the mouth, you have just become acquainted with a gizzard shad.