Sheepshead - A Good Fighting Fish You Can Catch from ShoreThe sheepshead is gray in color and usually has five bars of dark stripes on its sides. The stripes resemble that of a convict’s prison outfit. Its body is very deep yet compressed. The dorsal spines and anal fins are extremely sharp. It has a very hard mouth with numerous rows of flat teeth that they use to crush up their food. Honestly, when you take a good close look at the teeth of this fish, it looks like it stole Grandpa’s dentures! This is a quite beautiful fish. They can grow to be 2 ½ feet long but they are commonly caught at about eight inches long.Sheepshead have a firm, white flesh and a mild flavor. They are great fighters and will certainly prove it if you get one on your line.
The fish consume Fiddler crabs, oysters, shrimp, clams and barnacles. They surely love their crustaceans and bivalves. Bait-wise they usually hit on mussels, clams, sand fleas and shrimp. When they cannot find any of their favorite foods, they will consume algae and plant material. They are notorious for being bait thieves so it is essential to use a small hook or you will lose all of your bait and have no fish to take home. They usually are found around seawalls, oyster beds and tidal creeks. Toward the end of the winter and the beginning of springtime, the sheepshead move closer to the shoreline. They will cluster around reefs, wrecks and buoys for spawning. Artificial reefs or jetties are hot spots for catching sheepshead during spawning season. Hard structures are magnets for barnacles and crabs which are their favorite foods. When fishing inshore for this fish, it is best to use thirty to forty pound test. Some fishermen recommend attaching a ¾ ounce egg sinker above a six inch, 20 pound monofilament swivel. Then just add a 3/0 cutting point hook. A good rod choice is a six or six and one half foot graphite rode. Using a longer rod will potentially be detrimental as it very well may hit the dock or bridge, should you be fighting to reel the fish in. Chumming inshore near bridges and piers is quite easy if you have the right tools. You need to grab that old aluminum baseball bat that has been tucked away in the garage forever and a scraper. Hit the pilings with the bat to crush the oysters and barnacles and simply scrape them into the water. This will likely create a feeding frenzy among the sheepshead nearby. If any of these fish are near, there's a good chance that you will catch fish if you follow this process. Anywhere there is structure might be a good place to catch sheepshead. One good place are the rock jetties at Perdido Pass in Orange Beach. You need to be in fairly good physical condition to hop from rock to rock, but once you settle on a spot, it is just a matter of waiting on a fish. The Intracoastal Canal is also a favorite spot, and much easier to get to than the jetties. On the jetties if the fish aren't biting, you've already invested time and energy regardless. At the canal, you can park just a few feet from where you fish. Sometimes you can tell how good the fish are biting by how many people are fishing. The bend near the Orange Beach Gulf Shores line is often a good place to fish. Hopefully, you have been able to snag one or more of these elusive thieves. If you did, you will have worked up an appetite and want to cook it. This is a simple recipe for “meal in tinfoil” to try that is quite tasty. You will need: • 4 sheepshead fillets • 2 potatoes sliced about ½ thick • ½ cup of freshly chopped onion • ¼ cup of olive oil • 12 baby carrots • 2 lemons, halved • Salt and pepper • Non-stick aluminum foil Preheat the oven to four hundred degrees. Cut four pieces of foil that are about three times the size of each fillet. Place three baby carrots as a bed on the foil. Next, layer the potatoes (1/4 potato for each packet) on top of the carrots. Season the fillets with the salt and pepper and place them on the potatoes. Divide the onions between the packets and then drizzle the olive oil on top. Place the lemon on top of the packet and fold it up securely. Bake for 25 minutes and you have a quick and delicious meal with very little clean up. Honestly, after a long day of fishing nobody wants a mess to worry about cleaning. New! CommentsHave your say about what you just read! Leave me a comment in the box below. |
Subscribe in a reader