This fish story has teeth.
(Illustration by Michael Frith)
Ever tried to crack open a clam with your bare teeth? Yeah, me neither. But if you did, you’d probably want a mouthful of industrial-strength teeth that could make quick work of a shell and crush a crustacean or two, for good measure. In short, you’d want to be a sheepshead.
The sheepshead is a saltwater fish found along the North American coastline from the Gulf of Maine all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. It’s for this fish that Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, NY, where it was once abundant, was named.
In Virginia, sheepshead swim in near-coastal waters and are abundant in the Chesapeake Bay, where they are a popular sport-fishing catch.
Sheepshead have wide, vertical black and silvery-white stripes on their bodies, earning them the colloquial name “convict fish” in some areas. But the feature you’re going to notice with a sheepshead, the one you want to be prepared for, is the teeth. Look a sheepshead in the face and you’ll confront an alarmingly snaggle-toothed gawp, an orthodontist’s fever-dream of dentition, with human-like incisors and rows of stubby grinding teeth. If Wallace and Gromit, the toothy claymation twosome, had a pet fish, it would be a sheepshead.
Those teeth are necessary, of course, because of what sheepshead eat. The fish typically congregate around bridge pilings, rock piles, and other natural and human-made structures where all manner of jaw-breaking crustaceans and mollusks are on the menu. Oysters, mussels, clams, shrimp, crabs, “basically anything that’s on or attached to some of those rocks or pilings,” says Jameson Gregg, a marine scientist with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, or VIMS. “Sheepshead would love to be hanging out on an oyster reef,” he says. “That would be a big buffet for them.” Proving that seafood makes for a healthy diet, sheepshead can live a long time. The oldest recorded in Virginia was 40; VIMS scientists have aged some in their 20s, and “it’s not unusual to catch them in the teens,” says Gregg. (How do you age a fish? Scientists use the otolith, an ear bone that has growth rings much like the rings on a tree.)
Gregg says that their preferred, more sheltered habitat helps them live longer than fish that swim in open waters. At the same time, he says, the only predator likely to take on a fully grown sheepshead would be a shark. So, once they get big, they also have size on their side.
And they do grow big—to upwards of three feet and as much as 20 pounds. That size is part of what makes them popular for fishing; but they’ll make you work for your catch, if you land one. “Some of the larger fish could be very lively,” warns Gregg.
They also come equipped with very sharp, rigid dorsal spines you don’t want to go grabbing if you have a sheepshead flopping around in your boat. And as for that mouthful of teeth? While the fish aren’t aggressive, “they will bite down pretty hard,” says Gregg. “I would not not recommend putting your finger in there.”
Fall is a good time of year for sheepshead fishing in the Bay, according to Gregg, but you have to go looking where they like to hang out. (The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel’s bridge pilings seem to be a popularly reliable destination for hauling out some hefty sheepshead, if the plethora of YouTube videos are any indication.) Sheepshead don’t just make for good bragging rights either. They are also good eating, Gregg says, though you’ll have to watch out for those sharp spines and some tough scales to get to the meat. “You should definitely have a sharp fillet knife,” he advises.
The fish yields a very white, robust flesh that holds up well to cooking, he says. It’s great chunked up in a fish stew, where it won’t fall apart. But Gregg recalls a particular crowd-pleaser from his own culinary repertoire. He scaled the fish and baked it whole in salt—toothy head and all.
“I cracked the salt off and everyone could see the whole fish,” Gregg says. “I made it at my inlaws’ Christmas party—and it was a big hit.”
This article originally appeared in the October 2021 issue.
