Are sheephead good to eat?
When is the best time and bait to catch them?
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Are sheephead good to eat?
When is the best time and bait to catch them?
Yes, they are. can be tough to clean but worth it. March/April is when they come out to play.
They are tied for first place in my favorite eating fish category. Mid-February to mid-April is the best time for them. They aren't too hard to clean after you've done a couple of hundred.
No, terrible. You can put them all in my cooler.
:)
Yes, as noted, there is a technique to cleaning them:
1. Just scale, gut, remove the gills and bake whole in a 425 degree oven, simple salt & pepper is all you need. Score the larger ones to get them to cook faster.
2. If you fillet, don't try to cut though the scales or rib bones. With the point of your knife, lice the skin along the dorsal fins & then down just behind the gill plates. Then fillet down to & around the ribs. Unless you have a good sharp electric fillet knife, if so, just have at it..
You can catch them year round, but the best time is when they are spawning, as early as February until as late as mid-April, just depends on water temps.
I would also note that just about all the fish we catch on the pier, other than very large black drum & pinfish, are "good to eat".
You just have to know how to cook them.
Even hardtails and ladyfish. And remoras.
Heck you could make canned sardines with LYs if you want.
I'll agree with Carl & Haywire. Heavy rib bones and sharp dorsal fins are the only thing that makes them a little tougher to clean but great tasting firm white meat.
only the black stripes are edible.
A few years ago I talked to two ladies fishing on the mid octi and they were filling their 5 gallon bucket with those hand-sized pinfish.
They said they were good eating, just scale, eviscerate and fry whole (like a bream I guess).
Makes sense though as they are a close cousin to sheepshead (just look at their teeth).
Pinfish are good. I have eaten them. It is just hard to get one big enough to fool with.
I love them. As others have pointed out, a little tough to clean, but worth it. I fillet them and cook them in a cast iron skillet on the grill with a little butter and lemon. I'd almost rather have a sheepshead than a redfish.
I ran onto a guy on the old pier one day and asked him how the fishing was. He said it was great, he had never caught so many catfish in his life. I'm thinking he had some nice gaftops, until he opened the lid to his cooler to show me. That 48qt Igloo cooler was slap full of 6-10" hardhead catfish. He said he was having a fish fry for his family that week and wanted all of them he could get. I tried to tell him that the hardheads weren't like freshwater catfish, but he insisted that they tasted the same. I don't know how that fish fry turned out, but I'd bet nobody came to any future fish fries he hosted.
I tried them once, had a strong iodine taste to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by spottedbass
Back in the day, we occasionally caught 2-3 lb pinfish on the reefs offshore!
Never kept them.
Another name for pinfish is 'sailors's choice', so that gives you an indication of taste.
Actually, Sailor's Choice is a different fish: Haemulon parra, in the grunt/margate complex.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haemulon
I just happened to see that name in my old "A.J. McLains New Standard Fishing Encyclopedia" which I've had since back in the Seventies. ---Has actual pages in it.
The key to preparing most fish is cleaning them right away, cutting out the lateral line and putting the fillets on ice or refrigerating them. I like to cook them right up when I can! As for sheepshead - GREAT! I like pinfish and I haven't detected the "iodine" aftertaste that CarlF detected. It's just difficult to catch pinfish/grunts/pigfish big enough and I frankly don't enjoy fishing for them either but if I catch a big one it goes in the cooler. Remoras are great fried up, as are spadefish, slot reds, whiting, croakers, speckled trout, bluefish, hardtails, spanish mackerel, and sailcats. The qualifier about sailcats - you HAVE to get every speck of dark red lateral line off the fillet. I grill king mackerel, small black drum, pompano, BIG whiting, and flounder. I don't want to take a big black drum and waste it, so I turn them loose (though I haven't hooked one in years). I've tried hardhead catfish twice and I found them to leave a pasty aftertaste that was unappealing.
This year, I'm going to try SOMETHING new. I haven't decided what, yet. Maybe I'll fry up some "scaled sardines"!
Check out Mr. Wire goin 'old school interweb' on us ;-) LOLQuote:
Originally Posted by Haywire
Does the pope sh!t in the woods?
Yes, the bear is Catholic.
And wears a funny hat.
Jack Crevalle maybe?Quote:
Originally Posted by eym_sirius
Jacks are good, once again, remove the red meat along the lateral line. I mainly use it in curry and the wife and kids love it.
Guess I will have to try the next large pinfish I catch!
Haywire, What's an encyclopedia???
:)
Fishapedia
I've personally tried and enjoyed most species caught off the pier including hardtails, stingray(one of my favs), black drum, and spadefish. Like everyone previously said, the prep is the key with most species.
My co-worker lives on the Pascagula river, he HATES sheepies(because he doesn't like skinning them) catches them off his porch on a daily basis and gives them to the neighbors.
I have a friend who catches hardheads and fries them without skinning - gut, cut off head, batter and in the grease. Claims they're great. I've never tried one.
Sheepshead are very good.