Sheepshead                         March 2007

My wife seemed surprised this morning.  I told her that I was going to take a kayak and paddle out to the old Zundels Pier to catch some Sheepshead on a hand line for dinner, and asked if she wanted to come along and scrape barnacles for me.

It’s the time of year when hunting seasons are coming to a close and fishing is on people’s mind. It’s a little early for most fisheries without a little travel time from where I live: that’s why I was thinking Sheepshead.

Members of the Porgy family, Sheepshead tend to hang around this time of year, during the colder months.   They tend to congregate in large groups in certain areas in preparation for their yearly spring migration offshore to spawn.

They feed primarily on shelled animals and have heavy, strong teeth for crushing their food.   They can be finicky eaters and difficult to hook. I have caught them while fly fishing but they can be a real challenge.

They are also hard to clean and do not yield a lot of meat in relation to actual weight, so they have not been as popular as a food fish. They are actually very good eating and can be cooked in a variety of ways.

Fishing for Sheepshead out of a kayak with a hand line adds a whole new dimension. This is truly getting back-to-basics: it does not get any simpler than this if you want to be a minimalist.

Reminiscing about my childhood living on Mobile Bay, the Duke and I used to catch Sheepshead on hand lines, using fiddler crabs for bait.  Sheepshead are known for their ability to steal your bait, almost undetected. Fiddler crabs were plentiful in those days, but we never were ones to waste bait, so the Duke and I used hand lines instead of our customary Calcutta cane poles that we used for speckled trout and other fish.  Even the smallest nibble on the end of the hand line was transferred directly up the line itself to our index or trigger finger.

As I grew older, I devised new ways to pursue Sheepshead, diving for them with a homemade pole spear. To attract them to an area were I could get a shot at them; I would chum them by scraping barnacles off pilings from the skiff, dive down, and spear them. I had to string cast net leads around my waist in order to stay on the bottom for the ambush!   This was really a two person job, and the Duke was not really into scraping barnacles for Sheepshead.

Fortunately, I started dating a girl who was really handy at running a boat and was a fantastic barnacle scraper. I was 16 years old and she was 14. I had been reading a lot about the Bahamas, had dreamed of living there and having me a conch woman, and figured this was getting close. We dated for many years and when we finally got married, we honeymooned in the Bahamas. It’s hard to believe that was over 40 years ago…

___________________________

Jimbo's Cast Archive

January 2007 - Kayak Flyfishing

December 2006 - Fly-fishing for False Albacore from a kayak

November 2006 - The Importance of a Kayak Fishing Guide

Sept/Oct 2006-  Jubilee

August 2006- Outfitting Your Kayak for Fishing

July 2006- Choosing a Fishing Kayak

June 2006 -   "Why I Started Fishing from a Kayak"

May 2006 -    "Jimbo Meador, Angler Philosopher"