They… are… BACK! Not in the numbers nor sizes we enjoyed a couple of decades ago, but in 2026 croaker have been back in the Bay in better form than we’ve seen since the birth of Instagram. Keeper-sized fish appeared all the way up to the bridge and beyond this summer, and just last week I heard about one caught in Annapolis that topped a pound. For the first time in a long time this June I actually ate a meal of fresh fried croaker fingers.
Will we see those big “horse croaker” in the coming seasons? Will their numbers be large enough that anglers once again plan night-fishing trips and load up the coolers? It’s too early to say, and in any case most of us are a little more wary of the cooler-loading these days. We’ve seen this particular species boom and bust twice in my lifetime, and nobody can really say why. Perhaps we anglers pummel the population, maybe its commercial fishing, or maybe the dominant impact all boils down to the whims of Mother Nature.
I’m reminded of the story a pound netter on the Patuxent told of “guessing we caught them all up” after harvesting truckloads of croaker week after week in the 50s. But in the early 80s they came back around again. And then they pulled another disappearing act. Then all of the sudden they were here again, and in 2007 the Virginia state record for croaker was smashed when a Portsmouth angler caught one pushing close to nine pounds—setting coloration aside the 27” beast looked more like a decent golden tilefish than a croaker.
We have, and we will, puzzle over the cyclical nature of this fishery and others like it. And yes, the same does hold true for rockfish. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the midst of a rather troubling downturn right now. The “why” is one question, and between degraded environmental conditions and the ability of modern man to decimate species of all forms, it’s become a much harder question to answer with any assuredness. But thanks to the 2026 appearance of keeper croaker we’re also given an answer to a different question: can the fisheries of the Chesapeake rebound?
The croaker say yes. The bluefish say yes. The sheepshead say yes. The black drum say yes. The red drum say yes. The cobia say yes.
Recently we’ve even seen glimmers of hope that even our decimated oysters might just be getting ready to say yes, too. We’ve had some significant improvements in spat sets in recent years, and the oyster sanctuaries built by the Oyster Recovery Partnership and its network are by every scientific measure shockingly successful. In fact, the Chesapeake now represents the world’s largest oyster reef restoration project with over 99-percent of restored reef meeting or exceeding minimum threshold targets for oyster density, according to the Chesapeake Bay Program. That givse us a big, fat “Y,” and all indications are that we’ll one day get the “E” and the “S” if we can keep the sanctuaries protected.
In the last few years as rockfish fishing in the middle Bay has grown tougher and tougher I’ve spoken with a lot of people who bemoaned the state of our fisheries. Some began fishing less often, and some even sold off their boats and hung up their fishing rods. Just last week I got an email from an old friend who falls into that category. His reason for reaching out? He heard there were some croaker around. He really missed fishing for them, so he was hoping I could find an afternoon to take him out. I’ll do exactly that—and I’ll bet that before too many more years go by, he hears the “yes” himself and starts looking at boats once again.