Here's a chance to savor one of the bay's lost treats - American shad.  On Saturday, head to Vienna in Dorchester County to join in the 14th annual Nanticoke River Shad Festival.  They'll be serving up "planked" portions of the tasty fish, to be eaten while enjoying live music, browsing crafts and taking part in the day's varied festivities.  There'll also be boat rides, children's activities, a raffle, fish toss competition, educational exhibits and a touch tank.

It's all done to celebrate the shad, which once thronged the bay's rivers and streams every spring on their spawning runs.  American or white shad were prized in the Chesapeake Bay for both their eggs, or roe, and their delicious but bony flesh.   They were such a staple in the nation's early days that writer John McPhee titled his book about shad The Founding Fish.

But their popularity proved their undoing, in a sense.  Overfishing and habitat loss, including hydropower dams, devastated the stock so that Maryland banned commercial catch of them in 1980.  Virginia followed suit several years later. Though the fish have rebounded some from thir low point in the 1980s, the ban in the bay has never been lifted.  The festival is getting its shad from one of our neighboring states, where the fish are somewhat more abundant and can still be caught. 

The photo above, from the Nanticoke Watershed Alliance's Web site, shows how the shad are slowly roasted on wooden planks over open fires to soften and essentially dissolve the bones.  It's a method the local Chicone Ruritans learned from their fellow Ruritans in Wakefield, Va, who have put on an annual spring shad planking for decades.  I attended the Wakefield feast years ago when I was in college, and recall the fish was scrumptious and bone-free.  

Besides feasting on fish, the Virginia planking was a raucous political rally, with officeholders and hopefuls showing up to schmooze and stump with the assembled celebrants.  The Nanticoke fest doesn't have such heavy political overtones.  Local legislators, Vienna Mayor Russ Brinsfield and a few other dignitaries will take part in the fish toss (using finsters made of foam, not the real thing).  The event is basically in good fun, though proceeds do go to help with local shad restoration efforts.

The festival runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is free.  It is put on by the Nanticoke Watershed Alliance, the Chicone Ruritans, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Heart of the Chesapeake Project, and the Town of Vienna.  For more information, visit www.nanticokeriver.org or www.viennamd.org or call (410) 873-3045.