the American shad an important food fish is found on the east and west coast of North America the shad lives in salt water but moves into freshwater streams to spine the shad is caught both commercially and by sports fishermen the commercial fisherman catches shad with a set net or a drift net the sports fisherman uses small jigs and spoons which are cast or trolled across the current the shared supposedly does not eat after they enter fresh water on their spawning run the reason they hit the lures is not well understood it is thought that they strike in fear that the lures will eat the eggs that they will spawn shad is often named after the river it comes from such as the Potomac shad in Connecticut the Edisto of South Carolina the Iguchi of Georgia spawning run begins in December in Florida February in Georgia and May in the Kennebec in Maine the shad has an excessively bony structure which is very complex moaning the shad can be a difficult job which one should not attempt unless shown by an expert okay in this segment we're going to show you how to bone a shad and this is the most difficult fish to bone that we're going to show you in this tape series this particular fish people start to cringe when they actually hear oh you can't bone a shad well yes we can and I was self taught by my dad thank God I had him he learned all by himself on his own the first shot I have a bone was in the ninth grade for a science project and then after that I got an A only because I guess I gave it a piece of filet to my teacher this particular shad that you'll see here is the Roe shad we'll end up showing you how to cut the head off properly which will end up leaving a collarbone and all attached because later on you'll see in the fillet that you can't do it any other way and we'll end up showing you how to remove the ROE properly and then later on as we assure you after this fish is clean how to use the row in a stuffing in a rest to pee okay now we're going to move the head you want to come up straight you just take the knife and you bump it up against this fin and so doing you bring that fin up and you push straight down cut right on through in one small motion and you remove the head in that manner the next thing we're going to do is we're going to turn it over and we're going to take pull out the top part of the intro pull it right on through now the next thing we have to do is remove this bone section and we're how are we going to do it is by coming on top of it when we remove the meat off of the fish and we will end up taking and showing you all the eggs in that fish all right now what we're going to do is we remove the flesh off the back half of this fish and this is a little different than we normally do we normally come in from the inside belly now we're going to come back along the vertebrae section we will come imaginary line will be drawn right along this section because we have a little smaller dorsal fin what we're going to do we're going to fly a little pressure down on the left hand we're going to take that finger put it on our little guard because our knife is becoming an extension of the nerves in our hand so we apply down we start with a curved edge we start to break through we very slowly draw right along the top flying a little pressure down on the left hand it helps draw that back we don't want to get on the other side we did it just moving it real slow you can hear me cutting through bones when I'm cutting through those bones what I'm doing is actually cutting through the bones that come off of the ribcage of the fish that ribcage is connected to the backbone of this fish okay all right now since we've cut all the way to the middle of the center of the vertebrae then we want to come down on the other side like we have on all other fish and you hear me get that knife cutting through those bones we're cutting just through the bones but we don't want to cut through the ribcage and we want to do is very gradually ride that knife right on top of that rib cage the reason we doing it in this manner is that if we cut too deep we'll cut through that rib cage and we'll cut into the row and we don't want to damage that row but we want to make sure when we do this that we don't leave any meat on the backbone with this fish more than any it's very important that we get very close because if we don't we won't have enough meat later in order to work with as you'll see later in this demonstration in order to remove the smaller bones out of the fillet now at this point you see I'm just kind of riding along this rib cage normally you'd say well you take those bones out before and it's over with well besides these rib bones we will have over 300 bones inside this fillet I'm still coming cutting down on the inside I go and but I don't go all the way I kind of go to the point where I'm about almost 1/2 an inch above this keel line of the fish I come through the tail keep taking that finger is that on that finger guard on my knife and I keep wanting to be able to touch just like I'm touching for a splinter in my hand I want to be able to feel it kind of like when you take a pair of tweezers and you just touch it when you're taking a splinter I do you think you can feel where it is even though you may not be able to see it that's what you're trying to do with this nice blade once you get down to that point you want to then turn the fish around all right now if you turn that fish around and you've cut through you want to take your knife score a fine little line as you can see I just put enough pressure to just cut through the skin just kind of break the membrane of that skin so we can separate the flesh into meat now what we're going to do here is we're going to hold it and as you see at that point you see those bones start to come through we just very gradually pull all and separate just come right on back right on to the tip now if you noticed we did that there's only one little small bone that broke off right in the edge of that fish and if that's all we lose is that one little bone we've done a very good job okay now I'm taking this top after the fillet off of the shad now I want to show you if you get a little close-up right here you can see these little white specks these little white specks are bones that were actually attached to this backbone which you may have heard earlier when I cut through you could actually hear me cutting through these bones these bones came off from here if you can imagine and they're growing into the meat scientists believe it has something to do with these fish leaving fresh water and having to go to saltwater living a seven-year cycle and coming back to spine now what we're going to do is we're going to show you how to remove the ROE out of this fish now years ago these are just take this fish they didn't know how to bone it they didn't take it and really use it too much for food source so far as the fillet and all he did was just take and remove the eggs which is kind of like in a delicacy range kind of like maybe your caviar would be when it comes to the expense of it and how people like it in that particular form now what we want to do is we're going to take we're going to hold us fish up take our fingers and actually at this point where you saw these bones that came in and stuck in to the bottom of the fillet we're going to take at that point and just pry it apart just separate that ribcage right on down to the tip of the tail just keep going right toward the tip of the tail till you get right to the very bottom now after you cut through by removing it with your separation you turn the fish back you take your curved knife and just cut this membrane loose and what you don't want to do you don't want to burst this open if you want to broil the ROE by itself now if you're going to stuff it like we're going to show you later on the rest of for the bone shad then it doesn't really matter because you're gonna break the eggs up anyway but this is really a beautiful set of eggs for the shad alright now we've removed the shad roe this is a very very delicate set of eggs it's in a very big demand we've shipped a lot of the shad roe to the white house for different parties years ago when I first got out of college and was making a run for my dad for some shrimp to Augusta Georgia after being in a seafood market these two guys came up to me not really knowing what they needed and the gentleman who owned the market said we'll go talk to mr. Russo he ought to be able to tell you about this fish that you're looking for so when I was trying to describe what these gentlemen were looking for really not indigenous to the Augusta area or to Georgia they said you mind coming out in the car and showing us a telling this lady that we have with us about the different fish and I said sure so after going out to the car I found out that this lady was Mimi Eisenhower and indirectly the shed that we had been boning and sending to Augusta was actually going to President Eisenhower and herself and I found out later that we had been shipping the shad to people from Augusta because it would go through them and not to meet me at night first for just security reasons and since then I've received two letters from Mimi Eisenhower after that conversation and it actually thanks me for the shatter we have sent to them you