Sheepshead for Dinner

george

george

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What I find myself longing for the most during my time away as a snowbird is the autumn blackfishing on Long Island. There's an incomparable thrill in catching a large tog. However, I've stumbled upon a decent alternative, albeit not quite the same—Sheepshead fishing. This convict here weighs just over 5 pounds. While tog are undoubtedly more challenging on a pound-for-pound basis, this one gave my Stradic 2500 a workout. Leveraging my bottom fishing expertise from Long Island, I outperformed my Floridian friends by catching 15 to their collective 5. This marks my first attempt at cooking one, and I'm eager to see if it rivals the taste of tog.


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george said:

What I find myself longing for the most during my time away as a snowbird is the autumn blackfishing on Long Island. There's an incomparable thrill in catching a large tog. However, I've stumbled upon a decent alternative, albeit not quite the same—Sheepshead fishing. This convict here weighs just over 5 pounds. While tog are undoubtedly more challenging on a pound-for-pound basis, this one gave my Stradic 2500 a workout. Leveraging my bottom fishing expertise from Long Island, I outperformed my Floridian friends by catching 15 to their collective 5. This marks my first attempt at cooking one, and I'm eager to see if it rivals the taste of tog.


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Nice job!! At least someone is still able to fish in Winter months!
 
I cooked it two ways, some pan fried and some baked. I liked the fried of course, but it does have more of a porgy like taste than I expected. It was good but it doesn't compare to that sweet tog fillet. Part of the issue could be I've been eating grouper and mangrove snapper almost daily, and those are a tough act to follow.

Ironically, as I was cooking, I got a call from the Captain Dan Dixon asking if I left my Yeti coffee cup there, which I did. We got to chatting about fisheries and he told me the sheepshead were in the middle of their spawn. Well so much for me killing sheepshead in the winter. Im looking forward to fishing them again, only next time it will be catch and release only.
 
Roccus7 said:
That sounds great!!! I used to love baked sheeps' heads my grandmother used to buy at Meat Farms a long time ago!!
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You'd feel right at home in Iceland.

I realize it's just meat in a different spot, but I'm just not that gastronomically adventurous. Especially when they say they consider the eyeball to be a delicacy.
 
Avenger said:
You'd feel right at home in Iceland.
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I had a blast in Iceland, but now I'm disappointed that nobody asked if I would have liked eating sheep head. Some of the more unusual things I ate, and my honest opinion of them:

Fin Whale - Meh, nothing bad, nothing exciting
Puffin - Tasted just like sea ducks such as scoters, so made sure I had lots of blueberry sauce on each bite
"Putrified Shark" - Another something I'd rather not eat, but could certainly eat it to keep from starving
Trout smoked over sheep shit smoke - Fine, but oak, cherry, or mesquite smoke is much better
Horse - Tasted like a nice beef roast

What I found hysterical is their adoration of canned fruit cocktail!! Granted, fresh fruit is a luxury there, but they ruin perfectly good Skyr, their version of yogurt, by pouring the fruit cocktail over the Skry...
 
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