Croaker Run

Did the croakers ever make much of a comeback? I remember when you used to be able to fill a pickup bed with eating-sized croakers this time of year.

thing of the past. they're all used for bait now.

I remember in 1980 fishing Neches River out of Port Neches Park and catching 10 to 14 in croakers along with lots of little ones. We would keep 6 to 8 of bigger ones and have fish fry at home with Hush Puppies. I don't think I caught a croaker over 12 inches in last 3 years of fishing since I returned to Texas.

I remember one summer day at San Luis Pass on the western tip of Galveston Island we got into those Golden Croakers - no size limit or so but we kept about 10 of them. Man that was some good eating!

We used to catch them by the boatload at Bayport. I heard that it all stopped when they built the ship docks.

I caught one about a pound a couple years ago.. but yeah, they're harvest for bait has decreased the overall size... still a good one here or there if you know what you'd doing.

we used to catch a lot of big ones (12" long) off the TC pier back in the 90's. don't catch many big ones nowadays.

Can't all be gone; some sort of adult population has to be around to produce the little ones used for bait and there doesn't seem to be a huge shortage of those little guys. Gotta be around somewhere. Surprised there aren't reports of a run through packery channel. I'm sure there are plenty in the big ship channels in corpus and houston.

Caught a couple around 12" last weekend in the Port Aransas area.

We had a bunch of them running through Packerey about a month ago, not sure how long they were there. All in the 8" range. Haven't seen a 14" in years, not that we typically fish for croaker. Although you are making me hungry for some fried mini-filets... might take a shot at that in the coming weeks.