Fishing Articles

Sheepshead on the ICW

I spent the better part of the evening fishing from a few docks on the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW) in search of the elusive Sheepshead. For the first hour or two I had no problem finding them using fiddler crabs that I caught near by, but just could not get the hook set in any of them.

After burning through 3 dozen crabs and only having caught 2 undersize Sheepshead for my efforts I decided to switch to live shrimp. The live shrimp continued the constant picking with out catching until I cut a shrimp into 3 pieces and used only a small amount at a time.

Using the cut fresh shrimp I was able to land about 10 keeper sized Sheepshead and put one 15” sheepy into the cooler. The 15-inch fish was the largest of the day. I think the reason I was loosing so much bait is because the majority of them were quite small and didn’t eat the entire crab, just took parts of it!