As my late stepfather Frank used to say, timing is everything in life. This is especially true with all things wild.

Unlike a garden, where you can manipulate when you plant and when you harvest, gathering wild food is something that must be done at precisely the right moment. But judging when that right time will be is tricky, even for the experienced.

Holly, our friend Nick and I met our fishing guide John Harrison Saturday to hit the spring striped bass run. John, who runs Five Rivers Guide Service, works very hard to make sure he knows what’s going on in the region’s waterways at any given moment, and said we should be in good shape. Unlike the last time we fished for stripers, which was when we’d taken my mum out late March, at the very beginning of the run.

We’d caught nothing. We missed the migration by a week. Life intervened along the way, but we scheduled a makeup trip for early May. Then the rains came and blew out the river, so we delayed until last Saturday. In between we had a weekend of 102-degree weather, which further threw the stripers out of whack. Still, late May is prime time.

So we awoke at 4:30 a.m. to head to Rio Vista in the Delta in search of the elusive striped bass. Holly and I had high hopes of catching our limit of two fish each. We trolled lures up and down the river in oddly cold weather and 20-knot winds. We were absolutely chilled to the bone. On Memorial Day weekend. In California. Holly was very glad she did not wear shorts.

The day eventually warmed, and BANG! My line bent double and began to peel out against the drag. Thank heaven, a fish! I reeled it in against the current and it felt decent. Not huge, but definitely larger than the 18-inch minimum limit. John netted the fish and we were on the board with a 6-pound striper, a beautiful eating fish. The dreaded “skunk” avoided, our hopes lifted.

In vain. We trolled for several more hours, and nothing. Our biggest excitement came from the occasional freshwater clam that attached itself to our lures. And no, we did not eat them. Any of you who have eaten a freshwater clam will know why: Without the sharp brininess that the sea provides, freshwater clams taste almost exactly like snot.

The dreaded skunk. It means fishing without catching. And as I like my job, a bad day fishing is in no way better than a good day at work. I fish to catch and eat fish. I release only fish that are illegal to keep, and leave the water when I’ve caught my fill. And I hate getting skunked. Hate it.

This is where timing comes in. My life is fuller now than at any time before, which means some things fall through the cracks — like knowing, really knowing, a piece of water. This is a knowledge that will feed you well and not waste your time. I once knew the fishing grounds near me so well that I would get skunked maybe a half-dozen times in a year’s worth of fishing. I once made it 27 trips in a row without getting skunked.

Now I am at the mercy of guides, of outside knowledge. It’s my own damn fault. I live more than two hours from the ocean, and for whatever reason, have failed to put in my time along the Sacramento and American rivers, or Folsom or Natoma lakes, to consistently catch fish there. It is frustrating, and I mean to fix the problem. But where is the time?

Back on the river, John was feeling bad. When I ruefully said that with 20-20 hindsight we should have just gone shad fishing, John offered to take us. That night. We eagerly took him up on his offer, because we knew the shad were running hot in the American River.

So we packed up and headed back to Sacramento for a quick nap before we met again at 5 p.m. There was some excitement as we launched; a horseman had tried to ford the American River minutes before and had gone under. Turns out he couldn’t swim and died, but we did not know that at the time. We headed upstream.

It did not take long for Nick to catch a little male, or buck, shad. American shad were introduced to California in the 1870s and have thrived ever since; for some reason Westerners don’t greet them with the enthusiasm Eastern anglers do. Where daily limits are 25 fish here in California, shad have been so overfished in Virginia that they are illegal to keep.  Buck shad are smaller and weaker than the females, called does, which contain the Great Prize of Spring: Shad roe.

It is an ambrosial food, these orange egg sacs. Firm yet light like a souffle, fresh shad roe is neither fishy nor minerally, as is a lot of offal. It has the consistency of a well-made meatball and a taste like the shad itself, which does not bear the Latin name sapidissima for nothing. It is sapid — rich with oil and meaty. We like it best dusted in flour and fried in bacon fat, then served with lemon wedges.

But buck shad don’t have roe. Thankfully Nick landed a doe. Then I did, followed by another. Let it be said that catching shad, which are essentially giant herring, is a blast. They are among the boniest fish in North America, and all those bones give them some serious fighting power. Shad can tail-walk, make screaming runs against the current and spool your reel without too much trouble. And you can’t use heavy tackle on them, because their paper mouths pop lures easier than any other fish I know.

We lost as many shad as we caught, but between Holly, Nick and myself, we kept a good dozen, and eight were does filled with roe.

We’d caught the run. Finally. Shad typically don’t start migrating upriver until Memorial Day, but this year has been as weird for the shad as it has for the stripers. Anglers started catching shad here in early May, which almost never happens. I just hope the run lasts another month, as my brother and father are coming out to fish in late June — normally prime time for shad. but what’s normal anymore?

We did not get off the water until after 9 p.m., making it about 12 hours on the water, all told. Just like the old days on the Atlantic, only I am older and the days seem longer now. Ibuprofen is my friend. But we had fish, at last. I iced the shad down, and Holly and threw ourselves into bed and slept.

The next morning I cleaned the shad, which are a strikingly bloody fish, with giant scales and a coating of slime that is really quite fun to deal with first thing in the morning. But it’s worth it for that roe, and for the meat of the fish itself, which is truly one of the best-tasting fish I’ve ever eaten — if only it did not have all those bones! I cannot truly bone a shad, although I can do a passable job at removing most of them.

I did leave out a few fillets to experiment with (more on that later), but the bulk of the fish were headed for a brine soak and then some smoke. Smoked shad is a delight, and it allows you to easily flake off the meat from the zillion bones and then use it for dishes like shad cakes, or my favorite, smoked shad aioli.

Smoking the shad took all day, and I am pretty happy with my method for smoking them. I like using maple syrup in the brine, as it is a truly American ingredient for a truly American fish — caught in the American River. Unfortunately, I also learned that you cannot hang shad in the smoker the way you can fish with thicker, stronger skins; they fell. Fortunately I had a grate to catch them, so all was not lost.

In the end, however, we got lucky. We caught the shad run at its start and came home with some fish. We also punctuated the end of the spring striped bass season, and now must wait until the fish migrate back into San Francisco Bay, where they will be running hot and heavy come July. For now, it’s on to different adventures. What will be at its peak next week?