biscaynenative

Blixx, Have you noticed a decrease in strikes due to steel leaders? I started fishing for snakeheads with essentially a bonefish setup, 10lb braid, and a 10lb fluoro leader, and it worked just fine. I then switched over to 20lb braid and 30lb leaders (my snook setup), mostly to not lose lures while overseas, which were painfully hard to replace. Now that I'm back in the States and can easily replace lures via the internet, I've gone back to a 16lb fluoro leader, and 10lb braid. I haven't really been cut off by snakeheads so much as lost fish due to them getting behind structure. I'm using a St. Croix Avid medium-light fast action rod and a Stradic 2500 as my dedicated snakehead rod. I find it has more than enough muscle to pull fish out of cover, as they don't make screaming runs like an equivalent-sized mangrove dweller would. The rod is quite stiff for its size, and isn't noodly like some of the other St. Croix rods I use, even though the other rods are rated as being stronger. I agree with the comment on the fish's jaw/ head bones, but to get around that I just make sure my hooks are razor sharp, and I switch them out every few fish. By and large, I've found that a good hook (e.g. Gamakatsu) almost always sets itself, as snakehead strikes are pretty violent, especially combined with their tendency to make an almost immediate sideways thrashing motion after the strike. As for baits, I mostly target snakeheads with wake baits and shallow-running crank baits.

Hi all, I realize this thread is quite old, but I wanted to post nonetheless to see if anyone has noticed any changes in the Potomac snakehead fishery since 2014. I fish from shore, and have noticed that 2016 has been a much better year for snakeheads than prior years, at least for me. I used to catch these fish pretty consistently while working in China (their native range), but found their Potomac cousins to be a bit more tricky. Recently, however, I've been hooking up on 2-4 fish per day, much more than in the past (and by "day" I mean the few hours I can sneak out to fish, not a full day on the water). Granted, this is partly due to refining my tactics for Potomac snakeheads (in the area of Fujian Province where I fished, blue/white spinner baits with silver double willow blades were hard to beat, but not so much back stateside), but I'm also wondering if the population hasn't stabilized, but is instead continuing to grow. This year I've pulled multiple fish out of basically the same location on consecutive casts on a few occasions, but hadn't previously hadn't had that happen. For instance, the two fish in the photos (one 10.5lbs, one 6lbs) came off of the same piece of structure, one right after the other. Any thoughts/ comments are much appreciated.

I know I'm posting on this thread after the fact, but I thought I should chime in. I worked in China for a few years, and did a lot of fishing over there. I was almost always targeting Northern Snakehead. Over there, I found that the ideal bait was a blue/white spinner bait with silver blades, or a chartreuse/ black with black and gold blades. I’d run them right along grassy edges or around downed trees (or trash, most places were essentially dumps), and they’d come out of cover and slam the baits. Topwater frogs worked as well, but these were really better on the southern varieties, down in Thailand. Buzzbaits, especially black and red, worked well at night. I don’t know why I never had as much success on topwater, because it’s not as if there weren’t frogs. Moreover, I was without a doubt the only person to target them the way we do. I never once saw someone fish with anything other than a bamboo pole or net, so my lures were the first they’d ever seen. Granted, I was only one data set, so my results are probably very skewed. I did have a lot of tackle (and still do!), but I found that most of my bass kit wasn’t as effective as I’d imagined. The only other thing I’ll mention is that in China (at least in my part of Fujian Province), the fish were really, really sluggish. When they hit, they hit hard. But more often than not, I could bonk them on the head and they’d hardly flinch. Maybe it was because there was no bass equivalent, so there is less competition for food. Regardless, however, their aggressiveness is definitely an American thing, as their overseas cousins are lazy more than anything. Just my thoughts.