Shad can, and are caught on hook and line using what are called 'shad darts'. Though they apparently do not feed on their spawning runs, for some strange reason they will go after these brightly colored small lures, usually with gold colored hooks. They are highly prized as game fish, sometimes referred to as a poor man's salmon, and can be tough to land as it is easy to rip the lure out of their tender mouths before landing. Lambertville, NJ has a big shad festival on the Delaware just upstream of where Washington crossed the Delaware and, as I mentioned in another post recently, their arrival in the Schuylkill at Valley Forge in April, 1778 was important for the Continentals coming off a hard winter. There is also a 'shad bush', so called because it comes to leaf at about the same time, early April that the shad begin their run. There are many early photographs showing the preparation of 'planked shad' . The fish, usually weighing about five pounds or so, were split into two flat halves, nailed to flat planks and laid upright next to a fire. This not only created wood fire taste but made it easy to separate the flesh from the many small bones which make the fish somewhat more difficult to eat than other fish. I have never seen shad offered at a fish market and the only ones I have eaten were the ones I caught. Unfortunately by the mid 20th Century their numbers were greatly depleted as many of the traditional spawning rivers were too polluted for them and a number these rivers (like the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna) were dammed preventing an upstream run. I think the recent building of fish ladders may have rectified this and much of the industrial pollution is gone as the industries along the rivers have gone. By the way, in those same streams, and in smaller ones, the shad are preceded by alewife herring, their smaller cousins. I am not certain about the shad runs in New England or south of the Delaware but I understand they can be found as far south as the Saint Johns River in Florida, though I don't know if there is any fishing for them in the deep South. I guess competing with fried catfish could be a tough sell.