Sheepshead Fishing

[Skolmann]

Jason and I tried our hand at a little known (but burgeoning) NJ fishery, that being fishing for sheepshead. Although in years past the were an incidental by catch, there now appears to be a large fish able population with the center of this fishery concentrated in the back bays of far south Jersey but they have been caught in some numbers as far north as Barnaget Inlet. Most (including myself) are familiar with these fish when in Florida where they are very common and average #3-6. However here, they are truly brutes with and average weight being #10-12.

We fished with a NS captain who is one of (if not the top) authority on NJ sheepshead. Theses fish feed on barnacles and other crustaceans on bridge stanchions-thus we fished extremely tight to them. If you thought blackfishing was a challenge, this fishery brings it to a whole new level. Their bite for the size of these fish is almost undetectable. First off you barely feel anything. The best way is to watch the rod tip for the slightest of 'pops'. We fished 7' spinning rods rated for 3/8-5/8 lure weights with 3000 class reels loaded with #20 braid with a short top shot of fluorocarbon leader to a small jig head that we baited with nickel sized Asian crabs. The tactic was to drop our baits right down a bridge stanchion to the bottom and slowly 'walk'it off the ledge to the sea bottom, lower the rod tip and keep it absolutely still, with no slack all the time keeping the line at a 90 degree angle to the rod tip which was kept low to the water. When you see the rod tip pop or twitch slightly we were instructed to set the hook with all we could while the captain would then back the boat away from the bridge-which while backing away we were told to loosen the drag until in open water and then fight the fish.

Now for the actual report. We started off fishing the bridge that leads into Avalon. Arrived at low water slack and fished the same few stanchions through the entire incoming tide (which brought extremely in clean and green ocean water-which the captain said was prefect). He'd been fishing this bridge the days prior to our trip and was averaging landing 10-12 sheepshead from #6-13 while missing countless other fish. Jason and I did our best but there is a high learning curve to this fishery. When I tell you the bites are subtle that would make it sound easy. You really had to concentrate. Lost count on how many times we didn't notice or even when we did notice were just to slow in reacting. We were however able to catch a few blackfish to almost #7-all released. We finished the day catching the last of the incoming tide fishing another bridge where we came across another boat fishing for sheepshead that was a friend of the captains who reported that although they were able to land a couple of sheepshead, the bite was off. Even though at this spot we spotted a big sheepshead under the surface we were unable to entice it. After catching a few more blackfish we called it a day.

As I said, there is a high learning curve and although it was frustrating at times it was also fun and interesting. I'm already thinking of returning again next summer (he's booked solid the rest of this summer) as I'm determined to catch one of these fish-which by the way are mostly released to be caught another day.