WHAT KIND OF FISH IS THIS?

[Sandcut]

Speedgunner,

Make sure that you understand that freshwater drum and croaker are two different fish. Freshwater drum are non-native, invasive, freshwater fish. Croaker are a native, saltwater fish, that are typically found down around Florida, but some can migrate up on the near-coast currents that flow north along the eastern seaboard, into the Sargasso Sea in the middle of the Atlantic. Croaker aren't invasives, as far as I know, and so shouldn't be killed.

[SevenMilePete]

Speedgunner,

Make sure that you understand that freshwater drum and croaker are two different fish. Freshwater drum are non-native, invasive, freshwater fish. Croaker are a native, saltwater fish, that are typically found down around Florida, but some can migrate up on the near-coast currents that flow north along the eastern seaboard, into the Sargasso Sea in the middle of the Atlantic. Croaker aren't invasives, as far as I know, and so shouldn't be killed.

Great Lakes Sheeephead are not invasive, in fact helpful to the native species by feeding on the invasive gobies and zebra mussels which came in from the St. Lawrence Seaway. Good article about this:
https://www.natureconservancy.ca/en/...rue-great.html

[Sandcut]

Great Lakes Sheeephead are not invasive, in fact helpful to the native species by feeding on the invasive gobies and zebra mussels which came in from the St. Lawrence Seaway. Good article about this:
https://www.natureconservancy.ca/en/...rue-great.html

I guess it would depend on where you find them.

Sea lamprey routinely come up the Delaware river to spawn. They're native. In the Great Lakes, however, they are an invasive problem. Great Lakes sheephead in the Delaware would be invasive. That is where the OP was fishing.