FishRook
A Georgia fishing record that had stood for a quarter of a century has been broken for the second time in the span of a year. Timmy Wood of Kite, Georgia, caught a state-record hickory shad weighing 2 pounds, 10 ounces on February 20, 2022.
Wood caught the fish on the Ogeechee River—the same waterway that produced a record hickory shad in February 2021. That fish, a 2-pound, 3-ounce shad, was caught by Christian Blake Jones of Swainsboro, Georgia, while he was targeting crappie. Jones’ catch was the first new record for the species in 25 years—and the first hickory shad in the state to top 2 pounds. Now Wood’s fish is the second.
Hickory shad are closely related to the larger American shad, and both are anadromous species that spend most of their life in the Atlantic Ocean. As adults, shad return to the river of their birth to spawn. In Georgia, the spawning run usually kicks off in January in the coastal southern rivers and can last until as late as May…
