He was 86. George was full of all sorts of stories. One of his best was about the dog that could shell peanuts. But mostly George liked to talk about his favorite fish, "Alosa sapidissisma," the American shad. It was his obsession.

George would tell you that shad are the largest member of the herring family, a schooling ocean fish which, like salmon, return each year to spawn in their birth rivers. Shad arrive in the Connecticut River in the spring when the water warms past 45 degrees Fahrenheit, usually around mid-April.

George, a tall, lanky former sport fisherman, would talk excitedly of the days when everyone looked forward to the arrival of boned and smoked Connecticut River shad and glistening shad roe in local markets. At that time in Old Saybrook, 40 boats went out to lay drift nets across the channel all along the "Saybrook reach," the wide two-mile stretch of water from the railroad bridge to Lynde Point Lighthouse on Long Island Sound. The netters, working in pairs, fished all night, their shad boats drifting down on the ebbing tide. Then, the fish were cleaned and boned and packed on ice in 100 pound shad boxes. Trucks bound for Fulton's Fish Market in New York left from under the Baldwin Bridge.

George began as a trout fisherman, reveling in the quite of solitary streams. He got hooked on shad fishing quite by chance. A friend persuaded him to come to the falls below the Enfield Dam on the Connecticut, where fishermen in hip waders stand shoulder to shoulder casting their shad darts into the current. George called it a "circus" - until he hooked his first fish. Pound for pound, no species can match the fight of an American shad. After that, George never fished for anything else.

He also began researching the history of the shad, amassing a vast collection of documents on early Connecticut River shad fishing. Later, George teamed up with his friend, Dr. Joe Zaientz, a retired Haddam dentist and shad fishermen, and the two established a museum in Bill Maynard's old shad shack behind the gas station in Higganum. This shrine to shad is open on weekends in shad season, from April to June.

We plan to visit the museum soon. And we will think of George now that the great schools of shad are swimming up the Connecticut River, as they have for thousands of years, on their long journey home.