Questions about summertime sheepshead

Hello, I am new to fishing. I am trying to get a basic understanding on how to catch these fish as I have heard they are mainly targeted in the winter. I can’t find much info online about summer sheepshead.

  1. Why is it that i’m only catching them during the heat of the day around 11-3? This seems contradictory to what others say online but I effortlessly get bites during the middle of the day but not during dawn or dusk.

  2. I am only catching juveniles. How do I catch large sheepshead? Are large ones even around in the summer or are they offshore?

  3. What areas should I look for? (Water depth, current flow?)

Thank you!

They go offshore to the reefs and wrecks in cold weather, and return in spring to the creeks. Late summer and fall is the best time to catch larger ones.

Fish them at dead low or high tide when the water is slack, You will likely find bigger fish deeper in the water column. Usually, lol.

Use fiddler crabs for bait or oysters.

Take a rebar rod or hatchet and smash and knock the oysters on the pilings around where you are fishing and chum the waters that way. Don’t screw up somebody’s dock, but scratch the crustations off nicely.

Position your bait close to the structure whether that’s pilings or rocks, they relate directly to structure

Use owner gorilla hooks that are snelled

They don’t bite and run like other fish, so watch the line where it enters the water, it’ll move slightly and the tip of your rod will bend ever so slightly. You won’t always feel them, rarely in fact, so watch the line and rid tip.

Sheepshead will bite the bait to crush it and then in an instant suck the slop in and spit the shell out, that’s when the line moves, but just barely

Use a short stout leader with an egg sinker rigged Carolina style. Move the bait up and down a few inches by the structure at different depths. Keep the bait moving vertically and just when you don’t feel the weight of the sinker, he’s there with your bait in his goozel, snatch him up.

In my experience Sheepshead are about the hardest inshore fish to catch, and if you get good at the “feel” of convicts you can catch most any fish in the creek .

Hope that helps

EF

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This does help. Thank you very much. I’m going right now wish me luck.

Good luck, and if you are really grateful for the info and it serves you well, post a few pics of your success.

We like pics, it’s the best way to get people to offer up more info.

I just went. I was at the cooper river county park, fishing in about 25 feet of water and only caught a toadfish.

I was using a Carolina rig with about 6 inches of mono with a small sharp hook and a fiddler.

Put it directly next to the pylon.

I kept feeling sheepshead bites but when I pulled up it up the crab was still on the hook.

Any advice? Just a bad day?

If the sheepshead were there your fiddler’s wouldn’t be.

Fish are like cows, they move around and eat. You just haven’t fished the right field yet, lol.

Really, when you start losing fiddler’s they are there

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I’m pretty sure they were in shallower water since it was high tide (correct me if I’m wrong).

Maybe, no way to be sure, this might help

https://www.dnr.sc.gov/marine/species/sheepshead.html

I do better on the sheeps on a falling tide for some reason. They tend to bite much more than the rising.

Places that don’t hold fish now might hold fish in a month. I love fall fishing for them too. Keep trying different spots. Any place with structure/barnacles/oysters potentially holds sheepshead.

Like EF said, strong small hooks. You need to set the hook right before that fish bites it…

25’ is pretty deep, 6-12’ should be good when it’s hot.

Your rig and placement sound otherwise good- like EF said you’ll find them. Lotta smalls in the summer but one fun thing about them is the next one could be the 8lber because they all hang out in the same spots. Typical rule of thumb is the hardest, oldest structure that never comes out of the water.

23 knows, october and november are usually the best months for inshore

If you are catching any, you have done better than me.