Most mornings, when the climate cooperates, angler Mike Sielicki could be discovered on the water in Fredericksburg, Virginia — about an hour’s drive from Washington — attempting to hook a species of fish that was as soon as thought of a harmful menace to the encompassing aquatic wildlife.
“To me, it is one of the best fish that ever hit the United States,” Sielicki says. “I hope it winds up entering into each physique of water so everyone can take pleasure in it.”
Sielicki has fished for northern snakeheads for 20 years, since they first confirmed up in Potomac Creek, a shallow inlet that feeds into the Potomac River, a serious Washington-area waterway. Through his firm, Apex Predators Potomac Creek, he takes paying clients out on his boat to fish for the invasive predator, which initially got here from Asia.
“I’ve a good quantity of those who come from out of the state, out of the United States, that come fish with me,” he says on a quiet August morning when the snakeheads are proving elusive up to now. “The water right here could be very shallow, will get very grassy, and that is their excellent habitat.”
Snakeheads first appeared within the Washington space in 2002. Almost instantly, native wildlife officers sounded the alarm. Scientists fearful that snakeheads would decimate this space’s native predator fish populations, together with the prized largemouth bass.
“The Potomac River is a famend vacation spot all through the nation for bass tournaments and sport bass fishing. It’s enormous,” says John Odenkirk, a fisheries biologist with the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. “And so, that was the priority, that this fish [snakehead] was going to destroy that, as a result of they have been form of the identical degree on the high of the meals chain.”
Snakeheads, which might develop to greater than 83 centimeters lengthy, have pointy tooth and may breathe air, which implies they’ll survive out of the water for a number of days — so long as their pores and skin stays moist.
Snakeheads additionally spawn twice a 12 months, whereas comparable degree fish solely spawn yearly. Officials fearful these distinctive qualities would give snakeheads the sting over native top-level predators.
“So, on paper, it is like, ‘Wow, they bought some aggressive benefit right here.’ … What was driving the worry was that the abundance of snakeheads would get so excessive they might simply overwhelm the system. That by no means occurred,” Odenkirk says. “They by no means bought to the purpose the place they may threaten the stature of the bass, as a result of there weren’t sufficient of them.”
Odenkirk says snakeheads aren’t dominating their setting partially as a result of predators, together with birds and different massive fish, discovered them. And he says the snakehead’s pure prey, together with smaller fish, instinctively adjusted to its presence.
The fish populations that snakeheads prey on haven’t declined, which suggests the snakeheads aren’t having a destructive influence on the setting, Odenkirk provides.
The fish can be in style with anglers, which has additionally stored the snakehead inhabitants in verify. Their agency, mild-tasting chicken makes them a sought-after delicacy.
“Like swimming rooster,” Sielicki says. “It’s essentially the most hardiest piece of meat that you’re going to ever get.”
Despite this suppression, within the United States the snakehead inhabitants has change into most considerable within the Washington-area’s Potomac River and its tributaries, and within the southern state of Arkansas, the place the fish was once bred for meals till 2002, when federal officers banned the follow.
Even although snakeheads haven’t had a noticeably destructive influence on the ecosystem, wildlife officers aren’t ready to present the invasive species the all-clear.
“If they get in someplace totally different, possibly the place we have now a threatening or endangered fish, the place there’s not as a lot variety within the fish neighborhood, there could possibly be some undesirable impacts in a state of affairs like that,” Odenkirk says. “So, there’s nonetheless that hesitancy to type of embrace the fish all throughout the board.”
Years in the past, fearful wildlife officers suggested folks to kill snakeheads in the event that they caught them. But a current state survey confirmed that about 40% of people that catch this prized fish in Virginia now select to launch it again within the wild.
But not Sielicki, who relishes harvesting his catch, which he does on this morning after an hourslong lull, when the decided fisherman lastly hooks a 63-cm snakehead.
“Back up! We’re on the point of put him within the boat,” he calls out. “Let’s see if we are able to get one other one.”