![]() ![]() If you really want to challenge yourself, fly-fish with big streamers that look like yellow perch or small bass. Use a rod with some backbone-a 15-pound snakehead will shred lightweight tackle.Īs the water clears up, slow-rolling a paddletail swimbait through a suspected snakehead hangout is a good bet. Noisy lures like chatterbaits and spinnerbaits can be effective when the water is stained. Spring fishing for snakeheads requires a deft balance of stealth and pizzazz. The longer version: The list of effective snakehead baits is extensive, though you’d expect as much from a fish that will eat just about anything that swims. ![]() The short version: Virtually any setup you have for bass fishing is probably going to work for snakeheads. While northern snakeheads may be exotic fish from another continent, catching them doesn’t require specialized gear. Today they occupy thousands of river miles in the region. Snakeheads first showed up in the Mid-Atlantic 20 years ago. For being a big, apex predator, snakeheads are easily spooked, and the low light of morning and evening can be used to an angler’s advantage. The best time to start looking for snakeheads is after a 3- to 4-day stretch of warm, sunny days that heat up the water. ![]() Most years, water temps in many of the shallower parts of the Potomac drainage will begin to flirt with 50 degrees by mid- to late-March. The key trigger for turning on the spring feeding frenzy is temperature. And since most freshwater fish move into shallow water in the spring to spawn, the ravenous, fish-eating snakeheads are going to be there, too-in numbers. This means, essentially, that where there are other fish, there are snakeheads. And why not? Snakeheads are a unique, “bucket list” species they’re fun to catch they can be targeted through various types of fishing methods they’re relatively easy to get to and-perhaps most importantly-they are surprisingly tasty. So local anglers answered the call and went fishing. By 2005, with fears the invasive, toothy creature would wreak havoc on the entire Potomac watershed, it was clear the only way to control the snakehead population was to fish for them. Less than two years later, in May of 2004, the first snakehead-labeled by the media as a “frankenfish”-was found in the Potomac watershed, in Little Hunting Creek near Alexandria, Va. They’ll eat virtually anything in their path.”īased on early data, Norton, along with federal and state biologists, believed the arrival of snakeheads portended a massive disruption in the ecosystems where they were being found. “These fish are like something from a bad horror movie,” Norton said at a July 22 news conference. By July of that year, Interior Secretary Gail Norton was sounding the alarm. But when snakeheads were discovered in a Crofton, Md., pond in the summer of 2002, the story exploded across the country. Besides a few locals, nobody seemed to give that discovery much attention. Way, way back before the internet turned up the volume on almost everything, an invasive northern snakehead was found in Silverwood Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles. ![]()
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