One man’s bait, another’s bite to eat
By Ralph Winingham
For LSONews.com
Bob Holley remembers the early fall days years ago when he would camp out on a Galveston Bay fishing pier with a bucket of shrimp and some light tackle, then head home with a washtub full of Atlantic croaker destined for the frying pan.
If Texas Parks and Wildlife predictions are correct, this September may mean anglers will have to break out their washtubs again.
“A 2- or 3-pound croaker hits like a 10-pound redfish,” said Holley, a 60-year-old retired trucker and croaker fishing devotee from Tomball. “They are a lot of fun on light tackle and are excellent eating.
“I started fishing for croaker with my grandpa — been doing it for 50 years.”
Most anglers think of croaker as bait for more popular sportfish. For some, they are a top sportfish.
Like most croaker anglers, Holley’s preferred method of fishing is to use a spinning rig loaded with 12-pound test to cast a small weight and a No. 3 hook threaded with a peeled dead shrimp to the bottom near structure such as a pier or jetty. Croakers are notorious bait stealers, but when hooked they can put up a good fight.
Holley and other veteran anglers who caught croaker during the big spawning runs in the 1960s and 1970s are looking forward to reliving those family-fishing memories in the wake of officials’ report about good numbers of juvenile croakers in net surveys conducted this year.
“The Sabine Lake area had a massive croaker year in 2009,” said Mark Fisher, science director for the TPW Coastal Fisheries Division. “We have been conducting net surveys for the past 30 years and have been seeing a steady increase in the number of juvenile croakers in the Gulf and bay areas during the past few years. This year should be as good as last year.
“A lot of people have forgotten about the big croaker runs in the past. They all seem to be focused on catching reds and trout only.”
Atlantic croakers, also known as golden croakers, are closely related to speckled trout and redfish and are one of the most abundant fishes in North American coastal waters. Although a croaker about 12 inches long and weighing one or two pounds is considered a large catch, the Texas state record is a 5.47-pounder landed April 24, 2002, by Paul Straw.
The prime fishing areas for croaker are in the Galveston Bay system, Rollover Pass and the Sabine Lake area near the Louisiana border, with catches spreading all the way down to the lower Laguna Madre.
“Croakers are good family fishing,” said Muriel Tipps, who has been operating Tipps’ Bait Camp at Sargent along with her husband, Roy, for the past 30 years. “There are very few fish you can catch where there is no size limit, and you can use very affordable fishing gear.”
On their stretch of the coast, runs occur in April and September, and they always bring plenty of croaker, Tipps said.
“Most people fish with dead shrimp on the bottom,” she said. “You can catch two at a time, and when they hit, the fight is on. It is like hooking into a small redfish. They are tough little fighters, which probably makes them such good eating.”
The flesh of the croakers is a firm white meat that is similar in flavor to a small redfish. Smaller croakers can be cleaned and scaled, then covered in batter and fried whole. Larger croakers are normally filleted, producing two clean, white pieces of flesh that can be fried or baked.
Although croakers are in the same family, they are distinguishable from redfish because they lack the distinctive spot near the tail of a red. The head is a little broader than a red. And croakers have small barbels on their chin like a black drum.
“People catch them through the year, along with sand trout and whiting, but the prime time is the spawning season from about September to November,” said Bill Balboa, ecosystem leader at the TPW Coastal Fisheries Division office at Galveston Bay.
He said although no definitive connection has been made, larger and more numerous catches of croakers in survey nets started shortly after by-catch reduction devices were required for all shrimpers in the Gulf.
“We are not sure that the runs will get to that point (of the heydays in the ’60s and ’70s), but we are catching a lot of juveniles in our surveys, and they appear to be doing quite well,” Balboa said.
Although their numbers appear to be on the increase and there are no size or bag limits for croaker, state officials are urging anglers to use restraint when hauling in what has been called one of the hardest fighting and tastiest eating panfish in Texas saltwater.
“As with any fishing, we recommend that anglers take only what you can use,” Balboa said. “Trying to load up a freezer is just not a real prudent thing to do.”
