When I was a kid in MD, fish in general was cheap, rockfish (stripers), bluefish, shad, hardheads, spot, even crabs.
As for the herring, I remember my uncle taking me and my brother shad fishing. No shad were harmed, but you coulda almost walked across the herring in the creek we fished. We didn’t have a dip net, just fishing rods with shad darts.
