Read the article with FishingTheSpot: the sheepshead
Keep an eye on this subject!
Thousands of species spotlights and techniques but also all the local information about your city!
Meet other anglers near you and share your fishing fishing trips, afoot or on a boat, at sea or in freshwater
See the fishing tripsThe Sheepshead
All year
30 cm
Did you fish
this species this month?
The Sheepshead belongs to the Sparidae family. Although it reaches a maximum size of about 76 cm and 22 lbs (9.6 kg), the adult sheepshead is most often about 5 to 3.6 kg and 35 cm long. The maximum known life span of the sheepshead is at least 20 years. They spawn in early spring. They can be fished all year round with the best season from December to April.
The sheepshead has a deep oval body with a blunt snout and a small, almost horizontal mouth. The posterior nostril is split in appearance. The dorsal and anal fins include short, strong spines. The second spine of the anal fin is larger. The pectoral fins are long and extend beyond the anal opening when pressed (close to the body). The caudal fin is slightly forked. The adult sheepshead is silvery to greenish-yellow and has an olive back. There are five or six dark vertical crossbars on each side, which are the most distinct in young individuals. The caudal and pectoral fins are greenish, while the dorsal, anal and ventral fins are dark or black.
The Sheepshead lifestyle
Sheepshead are omnivorous fish that feed on invertebrates, small vertebrates and occasional plant material. Large juveniles and adults attack blue crab, oysters, clams, crustaceans and small fish, including young Atlantic crushers.
Adults migrate offshore to spawn and then return to nearshore waters and estuaries, spawning frequency varies from once a day to once every 20 days. Little is known about spawning behavior. Depending on the size, females can lay between 1,100 and 250,000 eggs per spawning season.
The Sheepshead habitat
It lives mainly on the coasts around jetties, rock pilings, mangrove roots and pillars, as well as in tidal streams, the euryhaline sheepshead prefers brackish water. It looks for hot spots near sales outlets in the spring and river flows and sometimes enters fresh water during the winter months. These fish move to offshore areas in late winter and early spring for spawning, which sometimes occurs on artificial reefs and navigational markers. Juveniles live in mudflats and on mud bottoms.
the sheepshead is located in the western Atlantic Ocean, which includes the coastal waters of Nova Scotia (Canada) across the Gulf of Mexico, with the densest populations located in southwest Florida. Sheepshead also occurs off the Caribbean coast of Central and South America, in southern Brazil.
The Sheepshead angling
The majority of sheepsheads are accidentally caught in shrimp trawlers and thrown into the water, although some are intentionally caught. They can also be caught by longlines, seines and perforated nets.
