Living the dream has become a Big Apple nightmare for us snakeheads. Just yesterday I scooted my torpedo-shaped torso up the bank to maul a mallard with my morning espresso and was affronted by a gaggle of screaming children. No shit.
It’s true we like to eat—a lot—and we breed with more gusto than a Kardashian visit to the Knicks’ locker room. But discriminating signage outside our Central Park/Harlem Meer hood, calling us “intruders,” crosses the line. You’ve been told: If you catch snakeheads don’t release us and dial the 5-0. The injustice brings tears to the beady eyes of my 1,500 sons and daughters.
But compassion is building. Snakeheads have gained support from other ostracized groups like Yellowstone lakers. Field & Stream’s Kirk Deeter has even devoted the pages of his next best-seller to “Snakehead on the Fly”. And our PR team is busy re-branding the species, with something more kid-friendly like Snakey McSnakersons.
It’s a start. But if catch-and-release is really the ethos of flyfishers, don’t kick a good McSnakerson to the curb. To quote MLK, “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
—Snakehead
Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.