Article by Sue Foster
I had a cell phone call the other day from an angler out on the water who had caught a couple of fish with black stripes and wanted to correctly identify them. They were both good size and I was pretty sure that they were either sheepshead or black drum. It’s important to be able to tell the difference since there is a size and creel limit on black drum in Maryland but none on sheepshead!
Off the top of my head, I told the customer that sheepshead had teeth similar to a tautog and that a black drum had barbels beneath its chin. I silently hoped I gave the customer enough information so he’d wouldn’t get in trouble and mentally told myself I needed to look these fish up on the internet and have more information the next time someone asked this question!
I’ve caught a few black drum in my life, but only one sheepshead, and that was many years ago in Florida. Over the years there have been some hefty sheepshead caught around the Ocean City Inlet including the Maryland State Record caught by Raymond Daniel on July 25th, 2004 in the Ocean City Inlet. It weighed 17 lbs. 8 oz.
The last couple of weeks we have had several sheepshead caught by boaters around the South Jetty. Also some young black drum. They both have black and white stripes and they both have been running in the 6 to 9-pound range. How do you tell them apart?
Sheepshead, or Archosargus probatocephalus, is a member of the porgy family. It is silvery in color with 5 or 6 distinct vertical black bands on its sides. It has prominent teeth, including incisors, molars and rounded grinders. Some anglers say their mouth looks like a “mouthful of marbles!” Again, sheepshead have no barbels on the lower jaw. It has strong and sharp spines on the dorsal and anal fins. Spadefish also have black and white stripes but have small, brush-like teeth.
As a black drum (Pogonias cromis) matures, the vertical barring disappears, but a juvenile black drum, weighing 5 to 15 pounds, has stripes similar to the sheepshead! Black drum can get really big, with the Virginia state record at 111 pounds. It was caught off of Cape Charles in 1973. Young black drum are a little more gray than silver. Their teeth are rounded and they have powerful jaws capable of crushing shellfish, one of their favorite diets.
The sheepshead’s mouth is straight out like a tautog, while the black drum’s mouth is slung down like a big croaker. The sheepshead tail is forked, whereas the black drum tail is straight. The black drum also has a high arched back. A really distinctive feature of a black drum is its numerous pairs of small barbels along the lower jaw that almost look like whiskers! Drum have a large swim bladder that produces a “drumming” sound. You will usually hear this when you catch one. This is how “drum” got their name.
Both sheepshead and black drum feed on crustaceans. Sheepshead have similar feeding habits as tautog, and anglers usually catch them when they are fishing specifically for tautog along the South Jetty rocks.
Like tautog fishing, anglers use a 1/0 to 3/0 Octopus styled hook tied short on a 40-pound test leader in the holes near the rock jetties. Sand fleas are the prefered baits and anglers can put one, two or even three fleas on a single hook. Flip into a hole with 1 ½ to 3 ounces of weight and wait for the “tap tap” of a bite. Wait for the fish to take the bait into its mouth, then set the hook. Like tautog, sheepshead will take the crab into its mouth to crush the bait. Sheepshead are very strong fighters, just like tautog, and you must get them up quickly before they go into the rocks and snag up your line.
Black drum also feed on crustaceans and are often caught on sand fleas, but they also like sea clam, peelers, hard crab, and shrimp. They are often caught on cut bait and even live spot when anglers are fishing the South Jetty or along the rocks near Gudelsky Park for stripers or red drum. I know a man that catches a lot of small black drum using several grass shrimp threaded on his hook. (He catches the grass shrimp with a shrimp net.)
“Should I fish strictly for sheepshead?”
No, because they aren’t there every day. But if you fish for tautog in any rocky area such as the North or South Jetty, the bulkhead along 2nd through 4th Street or at 9th Street, it’s good to have some idea of what one looks like in case you happen to catch one, so you can tell the difference between a sheepshead and a black drum.
In 2010, Maryland regulations only allow anglers to keep one black drum as long as it is 16 inches in length or larger. The most likely place to catch one is in your boat along the South jetty or on an inshore wreck. They are more of a southern fish, but are caught up here when the water is warm.
Black drum can be caught along the South Jetty, North Jetty, around the Rt. 50 Bridge, Rt. 90 Bridge, Verazanno Bridge (quite a few of them were caught there last year with peeler crab), and the Fenwick Ditch around the Bridge by Rt. 54. Quite a few black drum are also caught in the Indian River Inlet on clam at times.
So, if you catch a fish with black vertical strips, and it has a face like a porgy with a mouthful of weird looking teeth (like a mouthful of marbles) with pricky fins and a forked shaped tail, it’s most likely a sheepshead. If you catch a striped fish that has lots of barbels (whiskers) with a turned down mouth that starts making a drumming sound, well, get the ruler out, you’ve probably got a black drum. Both are excellent to eat!
Good fishing….
Sue Foster is an outdoor writer and co-owner of Oyster Bay Tackle in Ocean City, MD and Fenwick Tackle in Fenwick, DE.