Thread: Winter Fish - How to catch them!

Come November, there's some really fun and productive fishing in store for the pier fisherman. One of my favorites is the whiting a hard-pulling, great eating fish and when the schools are in, you can catch a bunch of them. All anyone needs to catch them is an open face spinning reel with a medium action rod and about 10-12 pound test line. Use a Carolina rig with (usually) a 1/4 to 1/2 ounce egg sinker above a swivel and about 18 inches of leader, which can be either mono or fluorocarbon leader, not steel, since whiting do not have sharp teeth. Whiting are bottom feeders. If you locate a school, cast PAST the school and slowly bring the bait near the fish. From there, let them find your bait. Whiting are bottom feeders, so let your shrimp piece lie on the bottom for a pick-up. Hooks should be relatively small for the whiting's small mouths and many times they'll set the hook themselves.
For bait, use a fingernail sized piece of fresh-dead shrimp and a small piece of shrimp flavored fish bites. Another very effective bait for whiting is ghost shrimp, not sold in stores, but "slurped" out of a calm, clear, shallow surf by a device uniquely designed for that one purpose. You can get one from Hooked Up or it's possible to make one yourself with PVC pipe if you're gifted with the ability to put things together. I'm not, so I use the store-bought one. Sometimes, whiting will greatly prefer ghost shrimp and they can be cut in half and they can be kept frozen until ready for use. I freeze them with a vacuum sealer and just pull them out of the bait freezer when I need them.
Another really important winter fish is the sheepshead. Sheepshead fishing from the pier is pretty much straight-down fishing, usually with either live shrimp or live fiddler crabs, either of which you can typically get from the bait shop. If the water isn't clear enough for you to see the fish, you may have to experiment to discover at which depth the sheepshead are feeding. Sheepshead naturally feed on barnacles and get their nutrition from the little critters that reside in pier barnacles. They have crusher mouths, so that when you detect a "nibble", it's actually the sheepshead crushing your shrimp or fiddler crab. Set the hook hard right then!
A really good investment for sheepshead fishing is a pier net, since sometimes these fish approach 10 pounds or more in weight. Also, you'll want to use heavier line and upon setting the hook, guide the fish away from the pilings, since their instinct is to go under the pier to the safety of pilings.
You'll want to have, in your pier cart, ice chest with ice, plastic bags (to keep your fish in), your tackle box, pre-rigged rods (usually about 1/2 oz. weight with 20 lb test mono leader and a #8 3X strong treble hook, for sheepshead) a hand towel, fillet knife and baggies for the fillets.
Typically, whiting and sheepshead move in to some degree, before/around Thanksgiving, when the gulf waters cool. Sheepshead can be found on any of the pilings from the surf zone to the octi. Whiting are most often caught in the surf zone , on the bottom and most of the time where you catch one, you can catch many more. It's a good thing for all pier fishermen to employ conservation strategies and self-regulate, throwing back uninjured small whiting so that they can grow to the size where they reproduce. In that way the resource will replenish itself and we can maintain a robust whiting fishery.