Added on Sunday, June 1, 2025  Fish Poster

Tidelines – June 2025

The Fisherman’s Post Saltwater Podcast Series gives me a chance to talk fishing with old friends and with new acquaintances that I hope become old friends. One of those new relationships is Capt. Victor Treto, Jr., of Carolina Charters out of the Wrightsville Beach area, who recently filmed a podcast with us titled “Summer Sheepshead on Inshore Structure.”

Victor has always enjoyed the challenge of hooking sheepshead himself, and now he’s taken on the greater challenge of teaching and leading his clients to come tight on these infamous “bait stealers.” His willingness and enjoyment of sharing information on sheepshead fishing was obvious on the evening we recorded, so when it came out in off-air discussions that my podcast co-host David had never caught a sheepshead, Victor had us meet one morning at the Wrightsville Beach boat ramp for a half day of targeting ICW docks for this delicious inshore species.

“I look for a bunch of old, stacked up docks. Maybe the docks are fallen down or pilings are broken in the water,” Victor explained as we headed south down the ICW. “There’s something about the growth on the pilings that attracts more of the smaller crabs or the barnacles are a little bit bigger.”

As we came off plane, Victor continued, “I also look for the way the barnacles are chewed off the pilings and see if there are any bare white spots missing where the barnacles are freshly eaten. Usually around midway on the dropping tide you can see if any sheepshead came up and ate some of the barnacles.”

We pulled out of the channel and idled between two docks before Victor deployed his trolling motor. The tide was falling, so once we were in position and he set the Spot-Lock, the boat pointed to the south, and David and I moved to the back of the boat to target the dock that was about 3-4 feet away.

“I usually like between 3-8 feet of water. I’ve caught them deeper and shallower, but that’s where I’ve been able to catch them the best,” offered Victor, easily falling into the role of educator while he grabbed a couple of rods. “I also like a dock that has quite a bit of current going through. I’ve always found that sheepshead bite better with current.”

The rod he put in David’s hand was 6’6” with a Penn Wrath II 2500 spooled with 20 lb. braid. At the end was a Carolina rig tied with a 30 lb. leader and a short shank j-hook. Fluoro, he explained, isn’t important with the leader when sheepshead fishing, but he does want a short leader (roughly 6 inches) and a 3/4 oz. egg weight, no matter the current, because of the way he positions the boat to the dock so that he is always casting with the current.

Victor noted that mud crabs are the best sheepshead baits, but he mainly uses fiddler crabs. Mud crabs are bigger, more immune to pinfish, stay on the hook longer, and present as a more natural bait out on the end of a dock. Fiddler crabs are simply much easier to catch in quantities, though, and when charter fishing for sheepshead, or really when anyone is fishing for sheepshead, you want to have significantly more bait than you think you need.

During the summer months, he will go out and bring in about 3000 fiddler crabs to have for the next couple of weeks or so (he’ll keep fiddlers for up to a month), and on our day, the fiddlers we were using had been caught three weeks prior.

“With fiddlers,” he told us as he grabbed one from the tub with one hand and David’s empty hook with the other, “size doesn’t really matter. I’ve found that even with the smaller fiddler crabs, the bigger the claw, the better it is.”

He pushed the hook in through the stomach and back out through the top so that the fiddler sits on the hook with his claws facing away from the hook shank.

You can drop your bait straight down beside the piling closest to you, but Victor is more a fan of giving a cast up under the dock, targeting the second or third pilings in instead of the pilings on the very outside, especially with docks that have a wider landing area out at the end. 

David did his best to cast back and under the dock from the port side of the stern, and I did the same from the starboard side. We both targeted different openings in the pilings.

“You definitely want your bait on the bottom. You want to keep your line really tight so you can feel every little bump that’s going to happen. If the boat moves up or drifts back, you want to either tighten the line or feed a little line out so that you can keep that same pressure,” he advised while watching both of our rod tips to get a feel for both fish activity and how well (or how poorly) we reacted to the nips and tugs.

Ideally, David and I were told, we want to feel three distinct tugs, and on the third tug, that’s when the sheepshead has usually taken the bait.

“The first hit is often when they pull the claw off,” Victor described. “On the second hit, they’ll come up and crush the whole crab, and the third hit is usually when the sheepshead will grab onto the fiddler and you’ll start feeling weight. He’s already got it in his mouth, he’s swimming off with it, and you just want to set the hook, not too hard but hard enough so that you get the hook past their teeth.”

These distinct tugs, Victor explained, were different than just nibbles. If we felt quick, rapid hits, rather than tugs, it’s probably a pinfish picking off the small legs on the fiddler. 

David and I lost plenty of baits, as is the nature of sheepshead fishing, but thanks to Victor’s guidance, it wasn’t long before David felt tugs and not nibbles, didn’t try to set the hook too quickly, felt weight and came tight, and reeled in from between the pilings his first sheepshead. 

Capt. Victor Treto, Jr., of Carolina Charters out of the Wrightsville Beach area, loves putting people on their first sheepshead (and their second, and their third, etc.), and he also embraces the role of educator, as is evident on his boat and in his podcast.

If you’re looking to start or improve your sheepshead game, and many of us are now that you can’t keep a flounder or a trout and only one red drum, then check him out at www.carolinachartersnc.com, or give him a call direct at (910) 622-9670. He’s also happy to take you out for red drum, black drum, and more.

Hopefully you won’t need 3000 fiddler crabs to get the job done, but if you do, Victor keeps a tote full of them all summer long just in case, and certainly one of those 3000 fiddlers will produce a sheepshead.