I finally learned how to catch sheepshead. I've tried catching these convicts for years, but until recently, I succeeded only in feeding them my bait. Not any more!

I'm referring to the Atlantic variety of sheepshead here - not the Pacific or California type. I've never seen the Western cousins, but the sheepshead on the eastern coast of the US are silver-gray in color, with black vertical stripes. Their most unusual characteristic is the mouth. It looks similar to a human's mouth, with a set of human teeth. The fish use these teeth to crush and grind bait like crabs, clams, and barnacles. The roof of the mouth is hard, too, to aid in this crushing ability.

Add those qualities together and you'll perhaps begin to understand why these wily fish are so hard to hook. They'll suck a bait into their mouths and remain very still as they crush the shell, often without even a hint of a tug on the line. When you decide to check your bait, you wonder where in the heck it went.

Sheepshead hang around piers, bridges, rocks, and oyster beds. They eat the barnacles that grow on pilings and rocks. Start your quest for convict fish at such places. Take along a rod with a flexible tip that's loaded with 15-lb line. The last two feet should be a wire leader or a braided mono leader.

As far as hooks are concerned, sheepshead anglers disagree on the correct size and type. The general consensus seems to be a 1/0 or 2/0 semi-circle or sheepshead hook. Some anglers swear by using red hooks exclusively.

The weight you use depends on the current where you're fishing. You want enough to keep your bait down, but you don't want it so heavy that it becomes cumbersome or that it spooks the wary sheeper. If you're fishing where there's little current, a couple of split shot might work. I used a one-ounce egg sinker on my last fishing trip.

Few sheepie fishermen agree on baits, either. Some won't use anything but fiddler crabs, while others like to use small pieces of fresh dead shrimp. I've seen plenty of old timers scrape barnacles from pier pilings and attach them to their hooks using rubber bands. My good luck came about through the use of sand fleas. (Read my article about free bait, where I describe how to catch sand fleas. The link is below.)

I fish from a pier. On my most recent fishing trip. I used sand fleas - mostly because I had my grandson along to gather them for me. I hooked the sand flea on my hook and tossed my line under the pier, near a set of pilings. Next, I slowly retrieved my bait, kind of bumping it along the bottom. When I felt a tug, I didn't attempt to set the hook. I just kept reeling in my line. Voila! I caught a sheepshead.

I figured this was just dumb luck, but I decided to try it again, anyway. It wasn't long before I felt another tug and reeled in another sheepie. Later, I hooked one too big to get on the pier without a drop net, and by the time a pal dropped it into the water, the striped bruiser had broken my line.

The water was clear enough to catch glimpses of the fish feeding around the pilings, and there were several fishermen who were targeting the species. Some dropped their lines straight down by a piling and then reeled it up about a foot or so. They bent over the peir railing and bobbed their bait up and down, waiting for a sheepshead to bite. Yeah...I've tried that method, too, but I could never hook one that way, although they seemed to have no problem catching their limit that way.

As I said, the sheepshead skunked me for years, but maybe now I can start evening the score. They're still WAY ahead of me, though.