If you do a keyword search for “invasive species” on any Chesapeake Bay-centered social media platform, you’ll most likely see more than you want to know about northern snakeheads. But, there are lesser-known invasives in the Chesapeake watershed, some that aren’t considered harmful and that are even stocked by our state natural resource agencies. I’ll leave it up to the experts to decide when it’s alright to promote a new species or when it’s better to eradicate one, but I can tell you for certain that I’m tickled pink about the rise of the redear sunfish.

Redear sunfish (Lepomis microlophus), also known as shellcrackers, are one of my all-time favorite fish. Some of my fondest fishing memories are of catching burlap sacks full of shellcrackers with my brothers and our father. Originally considered a strictly southern species, they’ve been helped along by selective stocking while naturally expanding their range north. In 1938, they were reported to be no farther north than Georgia but by 2011, they had made their way up to the Potomac River tributaries. In the past five years, I’ve caught them in many Eastern Shore tidal streams and in every DNR-managed lake that I’ve fished. Shellcrackers do great in this area because of their high tolerance for salinity and their taste for small snails and other mollusks. Today, the shellcracker populations in our tidal streams and millponds are booming.