Many different things make up the cultural identity of the state of New Jersey, such as its large coastline, large sandwiches, and large amounts of traffic. Most of said traffic gets concentrated throughout a narrow corridor in the Central-Western part of the state that meanders North-East, creating a concrete race-way connecting Philadelphia to New York City. This highway also separates New Jersey into two different playgrounds for outdoorsmen and women to hunt, fish, explore, and fall in love with. The first of them is the heavily wooded deciduous forests of North Jersey, full of black bears and trout and endless possibilities of being lost and being found. North Jersey is cool, but it's the vast and tannic pine forests of South Jersey, in all its swampy glory, that I've been ate up with recently.
My addiction to snakehead fishing is no secret. Nothing eats a topwater lure like a snakehead and nothing forces me to explore new water to look for new topwater hits than snakehead fishing. And like any serious addict, I'm constantly chasing new highs. So when my longest fishing partner Max called me up to chase snakeheads at a South Jersey marsh, I instantly agreed.
The drive down was almost an hour through some of the worst traffic in the Philadelphia area, a congealed mass of gears and oil churning away at the ever-under-construction yet never-maintained roads of South-East PA. Yet, I finally made it to the beacons of the Delaware, one of the many bridges that connects the two states, and flew down the interstate fast and violent as a Great Blue Heron towards the marshes.
I arrived and pulled off on the side of the dust-clouded road to a hot tidal flat choked with cattails and lily pads, perfect for snakeheads. However, bowfin fishing was also a tickle in the back of my mind, so I had caught a half-dozen redbreast sunfish from my local creek before I left. A bloody chunk of sunfish went out under a float, a topwater frog was tied on my other set-up, and a throbbing sun melted everything together. Another angler walked out from the brush and sparked up a conversation. As I was talking with him, half paying attention, a large black wake comes out and crushes my topwater. I let the snakehead eat, set the hook, and it thrashes on the surface for a split second before my rubber frog goes flying in the air and lands in the middle of the hot dry freeway behind me with a splat. I let my new friend throw a cast at the same fish, it eats again, and the same exact thing happens. He turns to me with a sigh.
"I've had five fucking snakes eat on top today and I've landed none of them. Water temps got them all finicky."
"Might try subsurface then." I responded. "I could probably get one to eat a fluke"
"That'll probably work. I never use them though. If they don't eat a frog, I don't want to catch them."
My trusted pink zoom fluke went on regardless, my new friend left, and Max arrived. Pretty soon, while fishing a new patch of lily pads, a wake appears behind the lure, I set the hook into a brick wall and soon land my first snakehead of the year, a roughly 4 lb coconut-head.
As I go to climb up from my landing perch, with the fullest intentions of tossing the snakehead into a cooler for the fryer, it gives a signature snakehead-death roll, unhooking itself, slicing my fingers with the gill rakers, and falling back into the water in the blink of an eye. I guess it's not a successful snakehead day if there's no blood drawn. I washed it off in the swamp water, letting the rust-red blood mingle together with the tannins like the way my best friend Sharkey and I cut our fingers to become blood brothers with some extremely tetanus-prone metal object on the red-sun-baked school playground so many springs ago.
All of a sudden, Max's float springs to life and dashes across the water. He sets the hook and instantly, a pissed off thrashing bowfin breaks the surface and snaps him off clean. Before we came to this location, we knew bowfin fishing was a possibility, but not likely as they were probably too busy in their spawning rituals. Now, it was reality. I chunked up a sunfish and threw it out under a float parallel to a set of lily pads and waited with near giddy anticipation.
While we waited for bowfin bites, both Max and I threw a variety of lures for snakeheads, managing to each stick a few smaller ones. They were being very finicky though, refusing to break the barrier between water and open sky and only eating deep. However, I did catch one on a chunk of dead sunfish that almost convinced me that he was a bowfin.
Finally, after almost an hour of picking through turtle bites and non-committal fish, Max gets a run with a lot more spring in the step. He sets the hook and a massive hole opens next to the pads, a melee of thrashing and spitting, and soon, his first eyespot bowfin is on the line. She fights all the way to the bank, where I precariously drag it up onto shore and the hooting and hollering commences.
Recent news from the past year had stirred up the rough fish community, where biologists had discovered that bowfin were actually two different species of fish. The northern strain was reclassified as the Eyespot Bowfin, named for their fake eyes sprouting from the tails, while the southern strain without the signature spot retained their original plain moniker. They were already a fish with many names. Swamp trout, cyprus trout, choupique, grinnell, choctaw, grundal, dogfish, and more regionally specific ones you'd have to travel far and wide to learn.
While the snakeheads were all killed and their flesh enjoyed by friends and family, we made sure to release the bowfin. Invasive snakeheads and native bowfins are often confused for one another, as they occupy similar habitats and both have long, brown, serpentine bodies. Look for the short stubby head and round anal fin of a bowfin, compared to the long head, mottled pattern, and long anal fin of a snakehead. Kill all the snakeheads you want to eat, they're delicious and invasive and plentiful, but I'd recommend releasing most bowfin you catch.
The sun slowly danced down between the pines and the shadows cooled down the steaming blacktop and yellow-green lily pads and duckweed. Everywhere, red-winged blackbirds emerged from their perches between the cattails and flew, flew, left and right, singing to whoever would hear. A chorus of peepers and bullfrogs sung back-up vocals and the whole swamp hummed along, totally alive.
All of a sudden, my bowfin rod also springs to life and I set the hook. My heavy baitcaster doubles over and a thrashing shatters the surface of precious stillness, as my first bowfin ever fights all the way to the bank. I turn her around a culvert and get a near heart-attack when the fish takes a run that leaves my braid dangerously close to the sharp concrete edge. Finally, I manage to bring her around and Max grabs the fish and drags it up under the bank, a beautiful green grinnell in all her spawning patterns lit up on full display for the world.
And to close out our day, as soon as I released that fish and threw out one more chunk, I catch another bow, a smaller male that ate as soon as my bait hit the water.
Eventually, it got too dark to see out floats and Max and I decided to call it a day, super tired and sun-baked but incredibly happy with how the day turned out. I turned the Buick northwards and drove out of the swamps beneath the last wisps of a dying aurora, and contemplated the many cuts on my fingers and knuckles sustained throughout this trip. It's not a successful snakehead trip without some bloodshed. Also the traffic on the way back was God-awful.
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