Sheepshead are plentiful at N.C. coastal venues, where anglers routinely bypass them in hopes of greener pastures.
The day was clear and bright, with the sun high overhead. Boats buzzed along the ICW and navigation channels in and around Wrightsville Beach on their way to far off destinations.
While many of them had left early for far away destinations, one was tied to the fuel dock at Seapath Yacht Club. For Capt. Jot Owens, it was a lazy day, with the start time depending upon the timing of low tide and not on the time of sunrise.
Owens already was fishing while he waited for his client to show up. During his wait, he tested the waters beside the dock pilings for the presence of sheepshead.
“I grew up fishing from the banks all around Harbor Island,” the 30-year-old Owens said. “By walking the edges and wading, I learned that while some are docks are better than others, there could be sheepshead feeding beneath every dock at the beach.
“Sheepshead are very aggressive fish and will bite any fiddler crab dropped beside any piling. An awful lot of fishermen zip past an awful lot of fish to find other fish and the fish they bypass most often could be sheepshead.”
After snagging some sheepshead, Owens loaded a bucket of fiddler crabs into the boat along with his light spinning tackle. He switched the reel handles to accommodate the needs of his right-handed angler.
“I’m left-handed,” he said. “That’s one reason I like to use spinning rods and reels. It only takes a minute to unscrew the reel handle and switch it to the opposite side.“
Owens navigated his 22-foot Ranger Bay Boat to one of the nearby bridges and began to anchor in a manner to secure the boat, yet keep it from contacting the barnacle-encrusted concrete bridge pilings. Three bridges at Wrightsville Beach and another at Figure Eight Island hold plenty of sheepshead.
“Most people just tie off to the bridge pilings,” Owens said. “But if you tie off the bow and the stern to the pilings, it leaves you with two problems. The first is that if you’re fishing between the front and back ropes, it’s tough to land a sheepshead. You want to get the fish away from the pilings as fast as you can. But with a rope tied on each end and the boat itself in between them blocking you from pulling the fish away from the structure, you’re stuck. You have to fight it out inside that small rectangle of water. That might work out will if you’re fighting a small fish. But if you hang a really big one, he’ll almost certainly wrap a piling and the line will cut off and there goes your fish.“
The second problem is with boat wakes. Owens pointed to a sign above the center of the bridge that identified the safe path for boat travel. The sign told boaters to go slow but was largely ignored.
“I’ve seen boats towing kids on water skis pull them right through that narrow opening between the pilings,” he said. “It makes me shudder to think of what could happen. It almost makes you wonder if people can read.“
Owens dropped a fluked anchor with a long chain upstream of the bridge and let the boat drift back beneath the bridge. He used the outboard to swing the stern of the boat close to the row of concrete bridge pilings then tied off the back end of the boat to piling and a stern cleat.
“The way you tie the boat is probably the most important thing about sheepshead fishing,” Owens said. “A lot of people won’t even try catching sheepshead because they don’t want to risk damage to their boats.
“Sometimes when I’m fishing in shallow water, I can even use the Power Pole to hold the stern of the boat and a standard anchor to hold the bow. With the stern secured with a Power Pole, I don’t ever have to put the boat close to the pilings, not even to toss a line around one of them. The rub rails protect the boat hull to a certain extent. But carelessness while tying off or the rocking of a big boat wake, can scuff up a hull if it gets pounded against a concrete piling covered with shells.“
Owens said with such good fishing so nearby, he often wonders why everyone wastes fuel and running time trying to catch more glamorous fish than sheepshead. He said the fish are tasty and put up a hard fight and are great for anyone to catch, whether families with kids or expert fishermen. Plus, they don’t require expensive gear, lures and baits for success.
“The bait’s even free,” he said. “To catch fiddler crabs, I go into the marsh at low tide and spot the crabs in the sandy openings. There are huge armies of them at low tide and they pile up on top of each other when they try to get away from me.
“In the confusion, all I have to do is put a plastic bucket down and sweep them into the bucket with my hand.“
Owens checked to see if his crabs were still lively after their capture and use the previous day. He’d caught a sheepshead exceeding 12 pounds using one of them the day prior and that was a feat he said was unusual for Wrightsville Beach.
“Most of our fish weigh between 2 and 4 pounds,” he said. “That’s the perfect size for eating. The bigger fish are still tasty, but their meat toughens as they get bigger so it’s probably better to let them go. Sheepshead meat is white and flaky, like grouper or porgy. It’s a wonderful-tasting fish.“
Owens used a garden tool with a flat end to slice some barnacles from a piling. The exposed concrete was starkly white in contrast to the other pilings in the shadow of the bridge.
“The sheepshead eat barnacles and are attracted to the shell fragments and exposed barnacles by their scent,” he said. “Some fishermen scrape the pilings during lower tide stages, then keep scraping them as the tide rises. But I’ve found scraping one time does the job. If you scrape it, the fish will come.“
Owens said he waited at least 30 minutes without a bite before he would leave a spot where he had scraped barnacles. He said sheepshead are spooky fish when they’re in shallow water.
“I like to fish in 2 to 8 feet of water,” he said. “Sheepshead feed three dimensionally, up and down the pilings. I like to fish on the bottom because the bait stays in one place instead of being washed around by the current and getting tangled. In shallow water, sheepshead swimming at any depth will smell the barnacles and come to eat the fiddler crab bait.“
Owens used a standard Carolina rig to catch his sheepshead. The rig consisted of an egg sinker sliding on the line above a swivel, 12 inches of 40-pound mono leader and a No. 2 live bait hook. He hooked a crab by inserting the hook point into the lower shell of the crab and out the top of the carapace until only the hook point was projecting. He pointed out that if the point protruded further, the fish could feel it or the larger hole could compromise the integrity of the upper shell.
“A small sheepshead can snip the crab off the hook and you won’t even feel the bite,” Owens said. “If the shell isn’t intact, it makes feeling the bite that much more difficult. Anytime I reel up a crab and see that it’s been damaged, I replace it. There’s no sense in conserving bait when it’s free.“
Owens dropped his bait several times and set the hook as he felt several taps. The species he caught included pinfish and pigfish, until one bite and the reaction of a hook-set resulted in a bent rod.
“When you set the hook hard and nothing gives, you’re either snagged or hooked into a sheepshead,” he said. “This is moving so it has to be a sheepshead.“
The throbbing of the rod told the story as Owens worked the reel handle and pulled the rod around the outboard to pry the fish away from the pilings. In a couple of minutes, he tired the fish and dipped it from the water with a rubber mesh landing net.
“When you’re charging a client for fishing time, you don’t want to waste that valuable time extracting hooks from monofilament mesh nets,” he said. “Look, the hook just fell out of the fish’s mouth. That can happen with any fish, but happens a lot with sheepshead.“
Indeed, the hook was stuck in the net, having fallen out of the layer of teeth that give the sheepshead its name. The teeth and hard palate help the fish crush the exoskeleton of its hard bodied-prey prey and also deflects hook points. A good hook-set is one that finds the thick, sturdy outer lips of the fish.
“A sheepshead grinds its prey and spits out the shell bits,” Owens said. “If he feels the hook, he just thinks it is part of the shell and spits it out, too. That’s why it’s so important to be able to feel the bite. You have to set the hook fast to get a hook-up. Fishing shallow helps keep slack out of the line and the braided line helps you feel the bite because it has no stretch.“
Owens went back to fishing, plucking several more pinfish from the water. Then suddenly his hands shot up, but the rod tip bent in a curve toward the water.
“This is a big one,” he said. “I hope I can stop him.“
The Ugly Braid line wrapped around a concrete piling as the fish headed away from the boat. Owens extended his arms and the rod beyond through the gap between two pilings as the fish churned the water in an attempt to escape.
This fight took much longer than the first one, with the fish surging again and again toward the pilings. Eventually though, Owens was successful. The line held and the fish lay gasping in the landing net.
“This one weighs about 8 pounds,” he said. “It’s not as big as the one I caught yesterday. But an 8-pound sheepshead is a nice fish in anyone’s book. He gave me all the fight I could handle. I call sheepshead the light-bite, big-fight fish. What more could anyone ask of a fish?“
Owens kept fishing in the same area, nodding to a couple of other anglers who were trying to catch sheepshead without success. They tied off to pilings for a few minutes, scraped barnacles from the concrete and typically waited for a bite for 5 minutes or so before untying their boats and heading for another spot.
“That’s the biggest mistake in sheepshead fishing,” he said. “In fact, it may be the biggest mistake in all types of fishing. Patience is the key. You have to pick your spot and wait and the sheepshead will come to you. Moving all over the place just chases them away.“
Tex Grissom at Tex’s Tackle at Wrightsville Beach said sheepshead fishing is a popular pursuit for a few local anglers. In fact, some are dedicated to the sport.
“It’s unique fishing,” Grissom said. “It takes a certain personality to catch sheepshead because it takes such concentration and patience. The bridges are good places to fish. But lots of fishermen catch them along the ICW docks. Some folks don’t like you tying to their private docks. But you can anchor right beside them and put your baits on the bottom.“
Grissom said the biggest problem is hang-ups. When a sheepshead strikes, it is within inches of a piling. A flip of his tail and the line’s tangled.
He also said besides fiddler crabs, shrimp, mud crabs, mole crabs and other small species of crabs work for sheepshead.
“You need a tight drag and a strong hook,” he said. “Our best sheepshead fishermen use braided (line) to get the fish’s head pointed away from the pilings from the instant the hook is set. Then they keep him coming.
“Catching a sheepshead is like catching a bream on steroids. They use any current and any structure to their advantage, running again and again and never giving up.
“If you land a big one, you’ve caught a trophy.“
Be the first to comment