Story by Lara Manetta
Photos by Sage Russell

It started my first spring living aboard my sailboat in Pamlico County. Each night, the approaching sound was somewhere between a squad of marching drummers and the guttural call of bull frogs. It was perplexing, especially as the noise passed under the hull of my boat in its slip near the Neuse River. It took several nights to figure it out: the croakers were here. 

Online references say the croakers are most vocal during the fall mating season, but their drumming has become a favorite harbinger of spring as they march up my creek. 

“I don't think they only make noise in breeding season,” said Keith Bruno, owner of Endurance Seafood. “I think they talk to each other all the time.”

Atlantic croakers are small, silvery members of the drum family. These fish are found all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to Massachusetts. They make their distinct croaking sound by flexing powerful muscles to rattle their swim bladders. Easygoing when it comes to choosing habitats, croaker can be found anywhere from hundreds of miles offshore to the muddy bottoms of estuaries and tidal creeks. 

And, while Pamlico celebrates the annual Croaker Festival right around July 4, the honorees that pass under my boat have usually fallen silent for the summer by then. If this year is like previous ones, I won’t hear them in my little creek again till fall.

I’d heard of the croaker even before I came to North Carolina’s Inner Banks. A two-day festival celebrating the fish is held Independence Day weekend every summer. On New Year’s Eve, Oriental drops a bejeweled croaker in lieu of a ball. A local coffee roaster, now operating as Chaos Coffee, once used “Croakertown” as its handle. 

“It was the Junior Women’s Club that named it ‘croaker,’” said Candy Bohmert, a Croaker Festival organizer whose title is Queen Croaker in Charge.

“At the time, it was a pretty common fish,” she said. “This used to be a heavily commercial fishing area. They wanted to celebrate the fishing aspect.”

The 46-year-old Croaker Festival initially included a Friday fish fry. 

But, as popular as croaker is as a local mascot, you’re less likely to see croaker on local menus today.

Longtime resident Henry Frazer has an idea why: “A croaker was two to three pounds, size-wise.” Now, he said, the ones you find are far smaller.

While its popularity as an eating fish has waned, it holds its place in the market as a popular baitfish. 

There are a few schools of thought when it comes to catching croaker. Bruno said he catches the bottom-feeding fish with a net. But others, he noted,  go out to the reef and use an artificial bait called Fishbites. The synthetic bait is infused with a shrimp scent. Anglers send the bait to the bottom to catch croaker. 

“They’re a small foraging fish,” he said. “They eat whatever they can get their mouths on, anything that will fit in there. So, little shrimp, little pieces of squid, those Fishbites, it’s all good croaker bait.”

George Midyette, who grew up fishing for croaker in Oriental and the surrounding waters, harvested croaker regularly.

“As a kid, you know, we’d hook and line them with a double rig. We’d use shrimp. And we would catch croakers,” he said. Croaker “was the predominant thing we could catch.”

What did they do with the fish they caught? Midyette said frying is the only way they’ve cooked them. He gave me a brief primer on cleaning and prepping croaker.

“We just cut the head and the tail off, and then cut the gut open and removed all the guts,” he said “After that, we scaled them.”

Croaker is a thick fish for its size, so you have to account for that when cooking. “Cut three gashes in each side,” Midyette said. “Cut them down to the spine.”

Midyette said his mother used cracker meal as breading. He prefers a blend of half flour and half House-Autry seafood breading mix.

“It’s a local thing,” he said. “House-Autry’s a mill up in the Piedmont. You’ll find it at some of the stores. But it’s too salty by itself, so we cut it with flour.”

Once cooked, Midyette said to pull the dorsal fin. “Grab the fin and the bone will pull out with it. So, you don’t have to worry about those bones.”

A food story about croaker requires at least one meal of the fish. Endurance Seafood regularly has croaker available. 

“I probably sell more croaker for tarpon bait than I do for eatin’,” Bruno said.

But it has a distinct following. “People who like croaker really like croaker,” he said. 

“And, you know, the rest of the people just, eh,” he said with a shrug. “They don’t think it’s great.”

According to Bruno, croaker’s small size and plentiful bones stand in the way of its popularity. “It's more older people that eat croaker. It seems to me the younger people want something fast and easy,” he said. “A small bony fish is not it. (Younger people) want just the meat. They want a tuna steak or a swordfish steak or, you know, something that's totally bone-free. They don't want to work on this little bony fish to get their meal.”

One of the appeals of croaker is its reasonable price. “Croaker is the cheapest fish I sell, usually average three bucks a pound,” he said. “And, you know, you can get a lot of food for three bucks a pound.”

What does Bruno like to do with his croaker?

“Probably use it for bait.”

At 52, I am one of those younger people, at least by Oriental’s standards. And Bruno is right: despite regularly cooking every type of boneless fish fillet I can get my hands on, before writing this, I had never cooked a whole, bone-in fish of any description. 

Daunted by the prospect, I decided to let someone else do the cooking first. 

Front Street Fish Co. in New Bern offers a variety of locally caught fish, including croaker as well as flounder, Spanish mackerel and trout, and other local offerings.

“(Croaker) is more popular with our locals than our tourists,” said owner Trey McGovern. “Sometimes the tourists are willing to try things. But mostly, it’s our local repeat customers who we see ordering and enjoying it the most.”

Even at restaurant prices, Brunos was right about croaker being a cheaper option. The two fried croakers I ordered come to $14.99 with hushpuppies and a side of green beans. I rounded out the meal with sweet tea.

Head removed or head on?

Head on. 

Bohmert said part of the fun of eating croaker is navigating the plentiful bones. Despite careful picking, I still had to extract a few of the slim, sharp bones from my mouth.

“My grandfather, he could just take a mouthful of fish and chew on it a little while, and spit out this wad of bones,” Midyette said.

The picking was worth it. Croaker is a firm and flavorful white fish. My instinct was right, and leaving the head on resulted in moist, tender fish. There was even a tiny morsel of cheek meat. I shook on a little Texas Pete’s and it was perfect.

After eating croaker cooked by the experts, I was ready to try my hand at croaker preparation. As a liveaboard sailor, however, I have limited kitchen facilities. Although most people fry croakers, that’s  not something I was willing to do in the tiny galley of my boat. I decided to grill them.

Bruno allowed that he has seen croaker grilled. But Bohmert was skeptical. “Good luck with that grill part,” she said. Because they’re small fish, “everything kind of goes away.”

I rubbed a mix of salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder into gashes I cut along each side. 

Conscious of Bohmert’s warning, I decided to tuck a few of the fish into foil packets with lemon slices, and a bit of olive oil. I cooked the rest directly on the grill following instructions from cooking website Serious Eats. 

On a slow grill, it took about 20 minutes for the fish to reach an internal temperature of 150 degrees, (145 degrees considered the minimum safe temperature for fish).

Served alongside squash cooked in packets, even the fish cooked directly on the open grill were tender and moist, perfect with a squirt of lemon. 

There are easier fish to cook and eat. Picking the bones was fun, but not something I’d seek all the time. But it’s a fish still deserves of a place onto dinner plates even as it continues to shift from food to symbol. 

You make Down County happen. Set up a recurring donation today to become a vital part of growing a visual and written history of the county.