TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Sheepshead Don't Mind A Little Cold

Photo by FRANK SARGEANT

Any piling crusted with barnacles or mussels, such as this one near the Boca Grande Causeway, is a likely target for winter sheepshead.

ADVERTISEMENT

By FRANK SARGEANT

Tribune Correspondent

Published: January 18, 2009

Updated: 01/18/2009 11:14 am

To tell the truth, you might not even want to go fishing when the wind screams out of the northeast and the mercury bumps freezing at dawn. But for those who have to get their fix, there is one species that doesn't mind the cold.

Unlike most Florida fish, sheepshead not only don't leave town for a Cancun winter vacation, they actually thrive in chilly water. Sheepshead move into rocky creeks, canals, dredge holes, bridge pilings and potholes in winter all over the west coast, and they'll stay until sometime in March, when they head for deep-water rock piles to spawn.

In the meantime, they provide steady action for anyone persistent enough to seek them out.

Basically, find the stuff sheepshead eat and you'll find the fish. They love barnacles, mussels (including the invading exotic green mussels), crabs and shrimp. If it has a shell on it, sheepshead eat it.

Hard structure is the first place to look. Some canals dredged into lime-rock bottom provide ideal habitat, and it's not uncommon to find dozens of 'heads stacked up in an area the size of your bathroom on a chilly winter morning.

Ditto for barnacle-encrusted bridge and pier pilings. Anywhere there are lots of barnacles, there are sheepshead from November through March, and often you can catch them without a boat. Simply work the walkways, get the bait against the structure, and reel up the fish.

At least it would be that simple except for the fact that the sheepshead is one of the most difficult fish to hook.

Its mouth is stone-like and its teeth are pointed forward into a narrow V, ideal for crunching through the shells of its food, but tricky when it comes to affixing a hook. Sheepshead are experts at snipping off a shrimp from the barb in a single nip, leading to the paradoxical axiom among sheepshead pros that "the time to set the hook is just before they bite."

Captain Mark Thomas, who fishes the South Shore area in winter, has devised a system that results in lots of hookups. He uses a bare half-ounce jig and threads a fresh shrimp tail on it, as if it was the plastic tail used in jig fishing. When a sheepshead grabs this, fished on microfiber line, the angler immediately feels the pickup, and a majority of the time it is possible to set the hook with a sharp pull.

Fishing with hook and sinker separated by a leader, on the other hand, can be more challenging, though that's the more common approach when fishing from a bridge or pier. One way to avoid lost bait is to put a heavy sinker on the end of the line and tie in the hook, a size 1 or 1/0 (no larger), about 18 inches above it. You feel the bite immediately and have a fair chance of sticking the fish.

Fresh shrimp are the easiest bait to come by, but those who go to the trouble of catching fiddler crabs or the little black crabs that live on seawalls do even better. Many anglers have caught a lot of sheepshead in recent years on the green mussels that are showing up everywhere around Tampa Bay. They're a tough bait, and sheepshead love them.

Whatever the bait, it never hurts to add a bit of chum to the water to encourage the bite. Scraping mussels off the pilings with a hoe or tossing cracked oysters into a hole will keep sheepshead active.

The minimum size on sheepshead is 12 inches, and the limit is 15 per day. They're one of the few delicious fish with a liberal limit, and if you're lucky enough to bring home a cooler full, you'll have wonderful eating. The meat is white and delicate, some of the best the sea has to offer.

The species does display some serious defenses to being filleted, however, as the fins are tipped with needle-like spines. The best approach is to nip off the tips of the little daggers with kitchen shears before you start cleaning. That way, any blood on the table belongs to the fish - not you.

They're delicious in any recipe, but simply baking with a light topping of spray-on olive oil and Parmesan cheese is hard to beat.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT