Snakehead Fishing in New Jersey

[MN_Rebel]

I also own a Snakeheads but fortunately they are legal in The Netherlands.
I wouldn't describe my snakeheads as calm and peacefull fish,but they aren't killing machines either.

About the low amount of muskellunge and pike's you catch in the U.S..
There is kind of a logic reason to that,I don't know about musky but pike is inactive for about 90% of the day.
And the bigger they are,the more lazier they get.
Pike ussualy feed like once every three to four days and only on a specific time of the day.
Most of the pike that are being caught on lures are not caught because they were hungry but because of an agressive reaction to a lure that came to close to them. Your waterways are probably filled with pike's,but because you don't know when and how to catch them you will end up catching bass.
I always went fishing in a small pond near my home from a couple of acres acros. Never seen nor caught a pike.
But in the winter of 2009 the pond frooze and due to a layer of snow on the ice all the fish inside the pool died.
When it stopped freezing and we came to take a look at the damage we were totally suprised.
Over one hundred dead pike's,with some over 30lbs.
The amount of time I spend at the lake casting lures most have been over 30hours,and I never caught anything.

Yup it's not that uncommon for someone spend so much time on a specific lake and never caught anything till either the lake was poisoned or winter/summer kills occurs, all fish surfaced, some of them were monsters. I know someone had a small lake about size of three football fields, he fished in that lake and caught only small green sunfish for 4 summers. He ordered DNR to poison the lake and found seven 18-25lbs northern pike along with lot of green sunfish. No minnows, no bullheads, no sticklebacks, only green sunfish and northerns. Then there's a tiny lake in our town that everyone's always fishing in that lake but catch only small sunnies, little they know is there are big catfish and carps in there.....lot of carps. DNR were do electrofishing in that lake and was surprised at the large numbers of big fish surfaced up in that tiny lake. So what I learned from these two lakes is that fishing is not good method for counting the fish populations.

 

[jpwolf]

No that wasn't me but i do live like 15 min away from shark aquarium

 

[Shenanigans]

lol I am thoroughly educated on Esox and actually perform alot of my own research revolving around them. Perhaps pike werent the best example to choose. My point was more of there are lots of big predatory fish that do not simply take over because they are the big alpha predators. Take bass as a better example. They grow quite large but many other species are still able to survive in a lake that have many large bass.

 

[Tequila]

This is the water way I've fished for them.

So this is where Snakeheads are infesting the waters and the land, stealing cars, pushing the local police around and biting through boats huh? Well I was there and I threw everything I had on me in the surrounding waters and never once hooked up with a single Snakehead.

 

[flemming]

So this is where Snakeheads are infesting the waters and the land, stealing cars, pushing the local police around and biting through boats huh? Well I was there and I threw everything I had on me in the surrounding waters and never once hooked up with a single Snakehead.

Ofcourse not,The snakeheads their intelligence has increased so rapidly that they now know everything about or species.
As a matter of fact,one of the snakeheads is reading your post right now and is planning a horrible attack at your house.
Seems like your in big trouble,when you are up against snakeheads everything works against you.
Not even the cops nor the goverment is going to help you.

 

[Rukusbelow]

MN_rebel knows his stuff, everything he says is true in my first hand experience. I've been to a lot of areas with snakeheads as an invasive species including hawaii and florida and caught more natives & other non natives species then snakeheads. Even back in the days at my grandmas neighborhood in vietnam, there was small man made pond around 60ft by 40ft and the population was stable with two species of snakeheads coexisting & a lot of other species including oscars, gouramis, tilapia, Even bettas and much more. Me & my bro used to catch more oscars & catfish then anything else in that pond.

In lake havasu after Stripers were introduced people thought there was a decline in Lmb & black crappie population but soon people realized that those species moved to more shallow waters & smaller tributaries. People might think snakeheads are killing off most of the other species but it might be a migration in one part of the area whether it's the snakeheads or the other fish, whatever the circumstances may be either spawning or competition.

 

[Tequila]

Ofcourse not,The snakeheads their intelligence has increased so rapidly that they now know everything about or species.
As a matter of fact,one of the snakeheads is reading your post right now and is planning a horrible attack at your house.
Seems like your in big trouble,when you are up against snakeheads everything works against you.
Not even the cops nor the goverment is going to help you.

This is why I now believe that the best solution to the problem is to import the snakeheads natural enemies along with a few other fish as backup and release them into the waters now infested with snakeheads. Though I am not sure the snakeheads have any natural enemies other than Asians. Open the boarders, and import and release a few hundred to thousands of A. Gigas this should curb the snakehead problem in know time. Plus it will make fishing far more interesting. And profitable. A. Gigas sells for as much as Tuna in the USA right.

 

[krichardson]

I don't know about them costing as much as tuna but they probably would put a nice dent in the native fish populations if they could withstand the winter temperatures of the Mid Atlantic region.


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[MN_Rebel]

I don't know about them costing as much as tuna but they probably would put a nice dent in the native fish populations if they could withstand the winter temperatures of the Mid Atlantic region.


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I have hard time to picture a.gigas put a dent on the native populations.

 

[Tequila]

I have hard time to picture a.gigas put a dent on the native populations.

Are you kidding if they could with stand the lower temps, a fish that reach those sizes would destroy the native crap fish.