Sheepshead have prominent teeth with incisors, molars and rounded grinders which helps them crush shellfish and other animals.
It’s not every day that people see fish with teeth, but consider Nathan Martin lucky. Jennette’s Pier, a North Carolina aquarium, announced earlier this week on Facebook that the fisherman caught a tooth-filled sheepshead.
“A happy Nathan Martin of South Mills caught this nice toothy 9 lb. SHEEPSHEAD yesterday,” they wrote. In another post, they added the hashtag “bigteethbigtimes.”
Nathan, a regular on the pier, went into the day hoping to catch the toothy fish and says he used sand fleas to help catch it.
“It's a very good fight when you're fighting on the line, it's a really good catch, and it tastes very good,” he said, according to People. He added that he plans to mount the sheepshead on his wall.
The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality describes the fish saying, “They have prominent teeth with incisors, molars and rounded grinders that enable them to crush shellfish and sea urchins. They have strong, sharp spines on the dorsal and anal fins.”
Sheepshead are usually around 30 inches long and weigh five to 15 pounds.
