Taking the Mrs for a Sunday-Tuesday trip (Oct 19-21) to the Port Lavaca area. Want her to be catching fish. When is the golden croaker run? It would be great to hit that.

Thats been on for a while we fished Keith lake a few weeks ok. I got tired of fishing for the first time ever. I pulled in over 45 croaker on squid, and shrimp.

Treasure! Fun on ultra light tackle and good eating!

^^ Oh yeah I was using a 2500 reel and a light rod. Cast feel a tug and set the hook. I then switched to a double drop rig and started catching 2 at a time.

You can't beat a good day Croaker Fishing , lots of Action and Lots of Fish Cleaning but Boy they're like Saltwater Potato chips you just can't eat one.....

I keep them if they are in the 16"+ size, anything smaller will get to live another day until they are bigger. I typically grill them with a heavy rub, or blackened. I've fish fried them a few times and they can taste a little fishy compared to the sailfin catfish... still croakers are great table fair!!

All summer long I was kind of limited to where I could fish for health reasons, would catch a few croaker in between the mass of little couple inch gafftops, they were like catching a bull red compared to those little gaffies.

a little more work to clean a bunch of them over two or three big reds but worth the work. sharpen the blades on your electric knife and get to cleaning/filleting. a 12"-16" one will give a big fight on lighter tackle. i will fry up a bunch of those fish chips (i call them fish sticks) and they make great fried fish tacos. i have also poached the meat with a little Tony's seasoning in the water and made fish cakes or even croaker (aka:tuna) fish salad. i put the sand trout in the same boat as the croaker, they taste just as good as a speck.

They're great eating, but they are really oily and you need to do 2-3 fresh water rinses after you filet them. After that it's salt, pepper, cornmeal , and grease and you can hurt yourself.

scale, gut, behead and fry. just eat around the little bones, kinda like eatin corn on the cob. makes a he!! of a mess-----i love it.

Voted treasure! Been eating them all my life. Use the finger size for trout bait! they love em too.

After a slow day I watched an old man catch 2 at a time and put them on a stringer. I couldn't stand it and waded over to ask him about it. He said it was the best thing to eat out there. He was nice enough to show me how to catch them. Got me a spec rig and caught some. Grilled them with butter. I was surprised. Great tasting.

If you soak them in a little milk, it'll help cut down on the salty flavor of the gulf... I've noticed the croakers in the bay taste more fishy than the ones I've caught in the surf.

If there was an in between option, I'd choose that. Depends on what you're trying do to out on the water. But I'd say more treasure than trash.

They're trash fish. Throw them back so that I can catch them.
Just kidding.
If you have ever eaten artificial crab, then you ate croaker.
I worked in factory in Bayou La Batre AL. We made artificial crab from huge croakers.
Yum.
Where can I catch some of these trash fish? I'd like to take my grand kids fishing this weekend.