By Richard Seale
Fiddling with, and for, sheepshead
Sheepshead fishing is quite good in Bogue Sound as I write this in mid-August.
The sound has lots of nice structures along its periphery such as piers, bridges and the
port walls. Depending on the depth of water around the pilings of those structures,
they provide great habitats for sheepshead. These fish have specialized mouth parts
with buck teeth and very tough inner mouth parts that allow them to grind shelled
foods such as barnacles and sea urchins which live on pilings.
A technique to fish for these most comestible fish is to pick a set of pilings to
fish. First off, edge up to the chosen piling and, using a long-handled tool like a
garden shovel, scrape off a goodly amount of barnacle growth from the piling. In
some places you will note that a lot of barnacles have already been shaved off by
previous sheepshead fishermen. This will create a chum slick and will bring in nearby
sheepshead as well as other fish. After this task is done, you can tie off from a piling so
your boat is pulled away by the tide. If in shallow enough water, it is a good idea to set
a stern anchor at an angle off the seaward stern so you can adjust the position of the
boat by using the bow and stern lines. Sometimes you can set the boat up and then
pull yourself into the piling to do the scraping.
You will want to have a stout rod rigged with a good reel filled with 25-pound test
or more abrasion-resistant braided line, and a leader of 30-pound test or more. The
leader needs to hold a one-to-three ounce sinker at its terminal end and a stout, live
bait-style hook (#1 or #1/0 hook for fiddler crabs and up to a #3/0 hook for urchins)
about 12 inches above the sinker on a short side loop of leader. From hook loop to
top of leader need only be about six inches. Stout rigging is necessary due to the fact
that a sheepshead, once hooked, will try to escape into the pilings. This often ends
up wrapping your line around the barnacle-covered pilings, where' sharp edges will
threaten to cut the line. You cannot go too far into “stout rigging” because most bites
of a sheepshead are very light. The common tongue-in-cheek advice is to “set the
hook just before you feel the bite.”
This trait means you will need a good supply of bait. Locally there are two live
baits that you can obtain at low tides: fiddler crabs and sea urchins. Fiddler crabs are
small crabs that scurry through the marsh grass and sometimes cover an open area of
a marsh with swarms of crabs. A fine-mesh, long-handled net, like a crabbing net, is
a useful tool. You can hand grab these crabs, too. The males have a claw that can nip
you, but it usually is just a pinch.
You will need several dozen crabs for each person on a sheepshead fishing
expedition. The crabs are hooked at one end of the shell. Sea urchins can be caught
at low, slack tide on exposed bridge girders and pilings. To use these for bait, you will
need to trim off the long spines with a pair of scissors. The round shell and body of
the sea urchin is then hooked through the bottom hole with the point of the hook
pushed through the top of the shell. Both of these baits can usually be purchased at
fishing supply stores by the dozen. Fiddler crabs can be kept alive in a slightly tilted
cooler for several weeks with a little bit of salt water and with goldfish food. Sea
urchins are harder to keep alive.
Drop your line next to a piling until the sinker hits bottom and then lift the sinker
just off the bottom. This tension arrangement usually provides you with the most
sensitive feel so you have a better chance to set the hook just as the sheepshead tries
to gently grind the bait off the hook. Once hooked, the fish puts up a nice fight. A
landing net is a good tool to use in getting the fish onboard, and needle-nose pliers
are handy to unhook this tough-mouthed fish.
Watch out for the long stiff dorsal spines on this fish. Size and limit regulations are
a minimum 10-inch fork length and 10 fish a day. These black and white, verticaUy
striped fish can run up to 15 pounds or so, though most caught are smaller than that.
Fish in the 14-inch-plus sizes are OK to filet. Sauteed in butter or broiled with a
butter rub, you will find that the sheepshead is one of the finest of table fare fishes,
fileted or not.
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