What to catch on a ‘lake of Mexico’ day near Tampa Bay? 2 fishermen try for sheepshead

When Welsey Ford and Mike Draayom wrapped up morning business Monday, they knew that was the best day to take advantage of beautiful weather.

It’s been one of the few calm opportunities between cold fronts, and a late start didn’t limit their catch for the day.

“It was like the lake of Mexico out there, definitely a calm day,” Ford described. “We left after 10 a.m. and wanted to catch sheepshead, so we had sand fleas and shrimp.

“Our first stop was outside of Egmont Key at the old forts, but all we caught was pinfish. We debated going back up into the bay to try for sheepshead or run offshore a few miles to what we call our Hero Hole.”

With the calm weather, the Palmetto High School graduates who live off the Manatee River pointed west into the Gulf. Their Hero Hole was about 7 miles away in about 40 feet of water containing a series of hard bottom with small ledges.

“We’ve caught everything there, hogfish, grouper, snapper, flounder, permit, yellowtails and mangroves. In the winter between January and March it’s normally good for sheepshead, and that’s what we wanted so we went there.”

They rigged up a pair of 2-ounce knocker rigs with 2/0 circle hooks. Mike fished shrimp while Wesley dropped sand fleas. Not long after arriving, they knew they made the right choice.

“I dropped and almost immediately caught a nice sheepshead, what we call a no-doubter that you don’t need to measure,” Ford said. “Then I dropped again and caught a nice hogfish and said ‘This is interesting.’ That was on a sand flea but when I saw a hogfish I was excited. I immediately switched over to a pink Hogball and shrimp since that’s what I catch more of them on.”

The temptation of more hogfish, Ford’s favorite eating fish, was enough to focus for more of them. The change in tackle worked, as he caught another.

“When I got another I said ‘Oh here we go.’ We got five hogs total which I was so excited about. The week before, we were trying to catch hogs and ended up catching a bunch of mangrove snapper! So this time trying to catch sheepshead we got the hogfish, bycatch we were very happy with!”

As well as the hogfish, Ford said the sheepshead also mixed in. By the end of the trip, they had caught nine sheepshead between 15 and 19 inches, five hogfish to 20 inches and a few mangrove snapper to 16 inches. They were done fishing by 3 o’clock.

“We had some concerns the muddy, milky water was going to make the fishing tough, but it didn’t pan out to be a problem. The only real issue we had was the fishing was so good we didn’t take any pictures with fish until we got back! Every drop we wanted to get another since it was so good.”