Greens, Graffiti, and Grease: Common sights of a snakehead quest. Both lures have a time and a place based on the amount and type of vegetation, but no matter which I’m using, I always throw black first. Rigged on Stanley’s Double Take hooks, when this lure gets blasted, connection percentages are significantly higher than with a hollow body. The Ribbit is a soft-plastic buzzing toad introduced to me by a fellow snakehead freak in Florida. The Wa is a hollow-body popping frog, and I’ve found that the cupped mouth moves more water with a slight twitch than traditional frogs do, which comes in handy when you’re being tracked by a noncommittal snakehead. Every snakehead angler has his confidence lures, and mine are the River2Sea Spittin’ Wa and Original Stanley Ribbit. The foreboding wake and toilet-flush take of a snakehead is the drug that pulls me away from smallmouths and trout in the summer, so if I can’t get them on top, I don’t want them at all. Lures like spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, and soft-plastic swimbaits that work effectively through the slop, mats, weeds, and pads snakeheads love will get pulverized. Both scenarios told me these fish can and will cover a lot of water in a day, and while they love veggies, they don’t stay in them 24/7. My friend Frank Heater and I spent the rest of the day sight-casting to snakeheads that were cruising in the open like bonefish. On another trip in July, after hours of pounding pads and duckweed-covered mats with no luck, I rowed onto a skinny mudflat with no vegetation. My experience over the course of the summer proved otherwise it’s highly unlikely that all seven fish were sitting together, but rather that they were out roaming and I would intercept a new fish every time one moved into that little cove looking for food. Many people assume snakeheads spend most of their time lying in ambush, and if you catch one on a piece of structure, you’ve hit the only one there. Interestingly, they all came off the same little cluster of lily pads in a very small backwater cove. The most snakeheads I caught in a single outing was seven in just two hours on a June afternoon. On the Move Many people assume snakeheads spend most of their time lying in ambush, and if you catch one on a piece of structure, you’ve hit the only one there. This is why it pays to hunt down unpressured fish, and not only did I do this on foot, but I also leaned on a Flycraft to get me into far corners and backwaters not accessible to many anglers. Snakehead fishing is most akin to muskie fishing you’d better not lose focus or you’ll miss that one surprise hit you get after hours of nothing. You may also get half-hearted follows with no commitment. Fish an easy-access spot where lots of other anglers are throwing frogs, and you’ll skunk more often than score. All fish are susceptible to pressure, but snakeheads are even more so in my experience. Not only is that false, I’d argue that snakeheads are smarter and more selective than most other fish. Thanks to nearly two decades of media hype, many people believe snakeheads are dumb, ravenous eating machines that destroy any food source that gets in front of their faces. What I learned by devoting an entire season to these fish might break some snakehead misconceptions, perhaps encourage you to join the growing legion of devout snake hunters from Queens to Miami, or inspire you to kick off a personal snake quest of your own, because the bottom line is, they’re not going away. In between, I racked up 26 total, including an 8-pounder. I caught my first snakehead on June 6 and missed my last on October 15. My goal for the summer of ’17 was to top my personal best snakehead, not only by fishing known hotspots but also by poring over Google Maps and chopping or rowing my way into any puddle or tributary where I thought I might find one. Instead of loathing their presence, I saw a unique opportunity to figure out a new species that, in many respects, I find more challenging, powerful, and fun than the local players I’ve chased since I was a kid. My uncontrollable obsession with the most hated invasive species on the East Coast started close to home on the Delaware River in New Jersey, a waterway that many people don’t even realize holds these fish. It also didn’t come from Maryland or Virginia. By Potomac River standards, a 7-pound snakehead is just a baby, but that’s what my personal best from the summer of 2016 weighed.
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