A 5lb. sheepshead on the end of your line will make you forget about trout for awhile

Check out angler facebook pages and you will see some great pictures of great catches of speckled trout and redfish. But this is the time of the year to get in on some great sheepshead fishing also. Locate where they are, have the right bait and the catching will keep you busy.
Sheepshead are a strong determined fish that use their deep bodies as leverage to keep your rod bent.

Port O’Connor fishing guide, Curtiss Cash said the most consistently fishermen are those who target sheepshead.

The deep-bodied, blunt-faced, buck-toothed sheepshead feed almost exclusively on mollusks, using an impressive set of incisors that help give them their name. A throat filled with anvil like pharyngeal teeth make short work of crushing barnacles, clams, small oysters, crabs and other hard- shelled forage.

Oyster reefs, jetties, pier pilings and rocky rip-rap areas are classic places to find sheepshead.

Jetties: Cash said that usually the first three or four sheepshead he catches at a spot are likely to be the biggest ones there. “They seem to be the most aggressive. If you start catching under-size fish, move to another spot 30-40 yards down the rocks.” The minimum length requirement for sheepshead is 15 inches.

Cash’s preferred baits for sheepshead: peeled, fresh shrimp threaded on a #1 or 2 hook. Some sheepshead anglers prefer fiddler crabs or pieces of squid. Live shrimp will work, but the bait seems to encourage sheepshead to just nibble on the head or tail, avoiding the hook.