If things were this bad in the late 1770s, George Washington's starving Continental Army might never have made it out of Valley Forge.
The shad, according to one account, came charging up the Schuylkill River to spawn, and ran headlong into soldiers who leapt into the water, herded them into nets and wolfed them down.
Now the shad are depleted to the point of collapse. The population is so low that the federal Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council last week imposed the first-ever cap on the domestic commercial catch of shad and river herring — which Washington's army also ate during the war against the British.