Snakehead By-Catches

 

    I'm on an unbeaten streak. For the past three years, my biggest largemouth of the year has been a Snakehead by-catch. And so far, this hasn't show any signs at slowing down. For 2022 and 2023, a chartreuse buzzbait that I was slow-rolling a top of some weedy patches for dragons has instead looked too tantalizing for a Larry. So far, 2024 has proven no different. 

    The mission for the day was simple: get my buddy Kyle onto his first snakehead ever. Kyle's no stranger to river fishing; he lives by the Delaware and has spent many summer nights soaking chicken livers and cutbait off the docks for catfish and stripers. However, this was going to be his first time on a proper river snakehead hunt. 

    We arrived at a weed-choked backwater about two hours before sunset. A slight trickle of cool river water still flowed into a small section, but most of the spot was lentic and hydrilla-dressed as slow as the dog-days of summer drag by. I put on a black popping frog and began casting up onto the opposing bank, letting my frog crawl back into the water with a splat, hoping for a snakehead to be up on the shore ready to ambush anything that wakes across its path. A deep gurgle on the opposite shoreline later I set the hook into a brick wall. This fish tries to jump and I put the rod tip down and start reeling as fast as I can, dragging up onto the bank not a snakehead but my biggest largemouth of the year and possibly ever. 

    As I'm releasing this fish, I turn to see Kyle with a snakehead on the end of the line. He manages to flip the fish up onto the bank, but it does a signature snakehead death-roll back into the water and snaps his line, getting away. 

    I told him not to worry, that I had lost plenty of snakes before I landed my first one, and that I still lose them to this day. This is all true. Snakeheads are tough SOBs with a rock hard jaw that fight dirty. A few weeks prior I lost an absolute giant right next to the bank, one that could have beaten my 31 incher from last year. 

    We continued upriver, stopping along the way to hit a couple striper spots. I made a cast with a topwater behind a river-rock that was creating a current break, a resting spot from the boiling rapids around it. I give the lure a few pops and something tucked up in the break comes out and crushes it, revealing itself to be a quality smallmouth that fought like hell in the current. 

    The sun began to dip down behind Goat Mountain and the golden hour was soon upon us, when the sky turns that beautiful shade of summer blue and gold and purple and the baitfish all turn their attention upwards. Soon, the section we were at was frothing with jumping shadlings, offspring of the American shad that worked so hard to make their river-ward journey in the spring to dance and spawn and die. I managed to pull out one more largemouth on a topwater before it got too dark to see and I had to go home to attend to personal responsibilities I had been putting off. We'll be back for those snakeheads.