Catch your own bait

Sheepshead are omnivorous and will eat about anything attached to or living close to structure, putting oysters, clams, barnacles, crabs, shrimp and mussels are on their menu. But the best and most-common baits are china-back fiddler crabs. But not all fiddler crabs are considered equal, and anglers can improve their chances when fresh, large  specimens are collected.

In many coastal areas, tackle shops have them available for fishermen; size and quality of the crabs are sufficient, but they’re not quite as good as freshly caught fiddlers.

Tucker Blythe of Grey Ghost Charters is a firm believer in catching his own bait.

“When you catch your own fiddlers, they are much better than the ones you can buy,” he said. “They are fresher, and I can cull out the small ones and stock up on the biggest ones I can find.”

Blythe likes big fiddlers with big claws.

“The bigger the bait, the bigger the fish,” he said.

In the right places at the right times, anglers can stock up quickly on fiddlers.

China-back fiddlers live in the intertidal zone of the marsh near marsh grass and muddy creek banks. Anglers can scoop up a handfuls of fiddlers when the tide is low or at least out of the grass. Blythe prefers places with big, firm mud flats on high marsh. The best time is on sunny days when they congregate away from their burrows. On cloudy days, fiddlers will stay close to their holes for protection.

“I like sunny days to catch fiddlers, but you can also catch them on cloudy days by digging them out of their holes with the handle of a shovel,” he said.

When scooping them up by hand or digging them out of the ground, anglers must scoop fast. The long claw on the male crab will immediately clamp down on anything it believes is a threat. The less these creatures are handled, the lower the chance of getting a pinch.

Fiddlers can be caught a few days up to several weeks before a fishing trip. In order to keep them  alive for extended periods, they must be kept in a shady spot and inside a bucket with a few inches of seawater in the bottom. The water should be changed out once a week.