Pearls?

[98prosport]

Can anyone shed some light of truth on this:

Is there really a "pearl" in the head of a sheaphead fish?

My brother caught one on Big Pine in Ottertail co. It must have been at least 15#.

After I let it go, later that day I was told I should have cut open his head to get the pearl out!!!!! What???

[fiskyknut]

It's called an otolith, their earbone. Pretty good sized in those sheephead. Depending which way you are looking at them they have either a lucky 7, or a lucky L on them.

15 pounder is a pretty good sized one.

fiskyknut

[BigDaddy]

The things one learns here never ceases to amaze me.

[Big Julie]

15# Sheepshead, eh?

They are one of the fightingest fish I've ever had on a line. They have to rate right up there for pound for pound action with anything.

My largest was 7 1/2. It was a scrapper. When it wanted to go down it just went.

I had some fun with it at a bait shop. The lady running it was a little inexperienced. I told her it was a smallmouth and she bit. I stopped by ther later in the day and she was not htere, but the talk of the baitshop was a near state record smalley.

In my world of fantasies, I took it took a taxidermist along with a nice 4# smalley for mounting and told him it would be a fun spoof to alter the fish to look like a smalley. He said he was interested and did it for a promo.

It looks unbelieveably close to a smalley.

He put a tag on it that said:

Dr. J's state record Smallmouth?

just havin fun.

:-)

[fiskyknut]

Couple interesting facts regarding freshwater drum, aka Sheephead.....

All tackle world record is 53 pounds 6 ounces, WOW!

ND record is 26 pounds 2oz.

MN record is 35 pounds 3oz.

Very large otoliths have been excavated from native american archeological sites that indicate some of these fish were upward of 200 pounds historically.

fiskyknut

[Dave B]

15lbs is big. I have boated some that big on Big Pine too that my college room mate caught. My biggest on the Mississippi is about 10lbs.

And yes, we have cut out the marble things. They arent too special IMO.

[JLsTyee]

Fishing Nebraska Resivors we catch a quite a few drum (sheephead). A lot a times we called them rattles or rock heads. If you find one laying on shore that is competely dried out. The ear bones (rocks, ect.) will actually make noise like a rattle.

[subzero]

Just can't image fighting a 200 pound sheepshead

[TeamNSO]

I have caught them up to 12 pounds on the red lake river outside Thief River Falls: I cut one set of "pearls" and they were neat...but not that impressive....just smooth bone like chunks...neat, yup...valuable...no