It feels like just yesterday that I walked from the parking lot on the south side of the river, followed the path under the 14th Street Bridge along the base of the wall before slipping down to where I start my shad season every year.

I don’t understand why time speeds up so much as we get older. I guess we get into our routines, continually moving forward with the next task, completing it, then moving again.

It can’t be too much different for a shad, spending a lifetime moving with the currents and tides, starting in the freshwater of the James before making its way to the ocean, then ultimately returning, focused solely on finding where it was born with one thing on its mind — making more shad.

I wonder if after such a journey, deep down they feel a little something that says in shad language, “Man, it seems like I was just here.”

The first shad of the year marks the beginning of spring, as far as I am concerned, and I was ready for it to start on Tuesday.

I was excited.

Not so much that I really thought I would catch anything, but that there was a really good chance shad would be in the river. I feel pretty confident come about March 10 that I can catch a fish or two regardless of what the weather has been like.