Thread: Rigging for sheepshead and pomps?

After being down and fishing this week I have the itch to try some new things that I have not tried before. One is trying to catch sheepshead.
How are you successful guys rigging to catch them?

Another is the pomp’s, do most use the regular pomp rigs or Carolina rig for them?

When fishing with jigs for the pomp’s , do you kind of crawl them over the bottom while jigging or keep them up in the water?

I have learned this week that I need to make the ghost shrimp sucker and learn to get some of them and to collect some sand fleas to have some of the better baits. I have been viewing some utube videos on this process and I hope to be armed with some of these in the future.
Any pointers on what to look for as far as areas to collect these in the surf.
Thanks

For the pomps, crabs and fleas are bottom bait that hops and swims down low, so that is where the fish focus. That dosen't mean a higher jig will always fail; reds are also grubbing fish and they will sometimes hit topwaters, but low is predictable.

Explaining sheeps . . . is like quantum physics of pier fishing for me.

I rig Carolina for both of them (mostly). Sheepshead fishing is straight up-and-down. The trick is to position the bait close enough to the piling where sheepshead are feeding without getting your bait and line tangled in the barnacles. Using ghost shrimp for pomps, I do what works, which is casting out and letting the fish find it and if that doesn't work, occasionally moving the bait on the bottom. Sometimes pomps are way out from the pier and sometimes they're underneath it. I crawl sand fleas across the bottom with the Carolina rig, but I may try the two-drop "pomp rigs" with sand fleas if I want to just let it sit and allow the fish to find it.

Finding ghost shrimp - It's easiest in low/slack tide with not much wind, and not much wave action. You find the volcano-shaped hills, pumping as you push down to get the most suction and then push the contents out toward shallower water to make it easier to retrieve the ghost shrimp. Do it two or three times per hole as fast as you can then watch for the ghost shrimp. Sometimes they'll be right next to the hole that you pumped out of.

I have my best luck with finding sand fleas in low-light, so right before dawn where water comes up on the sand and recedes. There are plenty of great YouTube videos on collecting sand fleas.

I find catching bait as extremely fulfilling/satisfying because many times, a fisherman is only as good as the bait that he's using. It's fun, good exercise, and provides you with bait that you can't buy at the bait shop. There's a learning curve, so you have to be willing to spend some time with it and it gets easier every time you go.