Snakehead Scuttlebutt Update

Photo copyright 2012 by Jackson Landers

I spent these last few days up in Westmoreland County on the Northern Neck of Virginia. Camping, fishing, and getting the local scuttlebutt on where the invasive snakeheads are now.

The wisdom I've always heard from biologists on snakeheads is that they can't survive in brackish water. They shouldn't be able to spread any farther south than, say, Widewater State Park.

However, I had a long conversation with a commercial fisherman near Montross that is causing me to question this. This gentleman told me that he's been finding juvenile snakeheads in his eel pots and that he and other fisherman have been getting larger ones in the brackish waters between Colonial Beach and Kinsale. As a lifelong professional waterman, I expect that he knows the difference between a native bowfin and a snakehead.

This alone isn't enough to re-write the textbooks on snakeheads. I'd want to see the fish documented and photographed with the location of capture fully established. Hell, if I had the budget I'd spend a few weeks down there looking for evidence myself. But consider this a warning. Snakeheads may be venturing into more brackish water than we thought possible, both as juveniles and as adults. The invasion might not remain isolated to the Potomac River watershed. This should be investigated.

More local intelligence: almost nobody is bothering to report snakeheads to DGIF as required. They are following the guidelines on killing and gutting every one that they catch. But fishermen from the Northern Neck aren't generally bothering to report them. The maps of snakehead catches maintained by the state and federal government which are based on reported catches might be useless.