If you want to catch a northern snakehead in its native range, you’d need airfare to China, Russia or North Korea.
By way of the United States, live fish markets and the surprising adaptability of the fish itself, today you can find northern snakehead in the United States throughout the Chesapeake Bay drainage.
Northern snakehead were first found in a small pond in Crofton, Maryland in 2002. The result was the stuff of popular culture legend. Juvenile snakeheads are capable of short bouts of overland migration. Adults are voracious predators. Snakeheads can spawn multiple times within a year and both parents will guard the nest and fry. The jaws are lined with sharp teeth and the fish is an obligate air breather, meaning it gulps air in stagnant waters and can survive in waters with high temperatures and low oxygen. The fish is a burst predator, chasing down prey items in shallow water. Ideal habitats include backwaters and backchannels or rivers lined with all types of vegetation, ponds and marshes, and weed-infested back bays of lakes.
News media covered the snakehead invasion around the nation’s capital, likely a result of intentional release from live food fish markets, and stories of the supposed frankenfish hit the wire. The country was mystified by a fish with characteristics that sounded like they were ripped from a science fiction film. Unsurprisingly, the east coast snakehead invasion even inspired a few horror movies.
Two decades have passed since snakeheads first showed up and outcomes on the east coast have been mixed. Initially, there was great fear that native fish would be displaced or consumed, losers in the ecological landscape via direct and indirect competition. Native fish like largemouth bass have instead persisted in the company of snakeheads. If snakeheads move into other waters with threatened or endangered fishes, it could be disastrous to those fishes which occupy specific niches. But for most native fish species, it has been a stalemate with no winners or losers.
Anglers and bowfishermen have come to love snakeheads, recognizing the fish for its mix of sport and table fare. Northern snakehead catch rates likely initially peaked in the Chesapeake watershed, but as is often the case in invasion ecology, snakehead numbers have leveled off in those first invaded waters. As snakeheads expand their range into new fresh and brackish waters on the eastern seaboard, they enjoy initial population booms.
Catching snakeheads I found, more so for a Johnny-come-lately like me, wasn’t as easy as it might seem. My first trip to the DMV (DC/Maryland/Virginia) area in the fall of 2021 offered a scant couple hours of fishing time, in which I came up empty-handed in my quest for a snakehead.
My return, scheduled in the spring when snakeheads are most active and ahead of their spawning period, came last month. I was in the company of Ken Perrotte and Dan Josselyn, neighbors in northern Virginia and avid anglers. The mission would be simple — work through the shallow, vegetated areas that attract snakeheads and see if we could catch one.
Ken, Dan and I would throw buzzbaits, spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, imitation frogs and whatever other topwater baits we could toss that would make a commotion on the surface and fool a snakehead lying in wait nearby. Snakeheads often post up on vegetation edges and tight to shore in just a few inches of water, attacking unsuspecting fish, frogs or birds that venture too close.
Only 60 miles out of the nation’s capital, I was surprised at the wild and scenic nature of the watercourse we shared. I’m being ambiguous of location out of respect for my hosts, but the wild and serene nature of the waterway was a sharp contrast to the bustle of the highways I rode south into Virginia.
“You’ll want to cast into the nooks and crannies,” Dan instructed as he guided his boat forward near an inlet.
Cupped broadleaves covered the water’s surface in rounded fashion, forming a wavey mosaic. The pickerelweed was thick but held pockets and lanes where a lure could be cast and swam back.
“We got one here yesterday,” Dan volunteered, “and I caught my largest ever here.”
Josselyn recounted two snakeheads brought to hand for him and a friend yesterday and several others that swiped at baits but were missed. Now was time to focus in and make the casts count. If I could put my lures in front of a snakehead, I didn’t think I’d be turned down. We motored slowly along the vegetation edges, picking through shallow edges, flats, mats of vegetation and occasional downed trees. Each spot looked better than the last. The late afternoon sun burned warm on our skin as we flitted along the irregular shoreline.
We’d hear occasional pops, likely, my hosts would say, a snakehead gulping air or ambushing some prey. Their observations whetted my mental focus against the drudgery of repetition. Believing you are one cast away for hours on end can be exhausting!
Dan hooked a few blue catfish, which, like the snakehead, is another Chesapeake Bay drainage invader so numerous that even they are making a living patrolling shallow water vegetation edges for prey. My heart quickened momentarily when a fish struck my buzzbait and was instantly hooked. Instead of a long, reticulated and camouflaged foreign fish, I recognized the frantic pull and familiar body shape of a largemouth bass. Twice I pulled in modest bass and found myself hoping for an invasive fish encounter.
The witching hour of twilight arrived and Dan positioned the boat on a pickerelweed bed adjacent to a large mudflat. With a mighty boatside splash, he missed a fish shortly before impending darkness forced our retreat. “I think that was it. I think that was the night’s snakehead.” We flogged the general vicinity of the strike and the emergent plant edges, but there would be no follow up outburst.
“You should have been here yesterday.” Whether it is said, or the thought merely comes to mind, it’s a stinging feeling when the fishing of the day falls well short of the previous. It’s even more painful when there isn’t fishing in the plans for tomorrow and redemption must wait. But if fishing teaches one thing well, it is the virtue of patience. Patience is taught in the short term when it takes time to catch fish, be it hours or days, or in the long term, knowing that a return trip, a year or more distant, may be the best chance to catch a sought-after fish or enjoy a banner day on the water.
“I guess this means you’ll just have to come back again,” offered Ken, an invitation too benevolent to turn down. A full snakehead trip experience with great scenery and company was one heck of a consolation parting gift until I can again return.
I’m just one trip closer now.