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Fly Fishing for Mullet - Part One |
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You wouldnt believe how many people make that statement when faced with someone attempting to catch a Mullet, and to some extent it is true, in that you could be wasting your time right from the onset, but given the correct timing, location, setup and approach tactics, these fish are far from impossible to catch..... difficult to overcome and land sometimes, but not too difficult to hook.... The Mullet i seek up here in West Cumbria are Thick Lipped Grey Mullet "Chelon Labrosus", the term "thick lipped" offers a clue and should eradicate the mindset that these fish have a small soft mouth of which is impossible for a hook to remain in place, im guessing the confusion arises from "Liza Ramada" the "Thin Lipped Grey Mullet" another species of Grey Mullet of which i have never encountered up here, more common on southern shores. The sport to be had Mullet fishing in the Uk is fantastic, first
of all it is free, as long as you are not fishing on a tidal
stretch of river where the rights to access may be owned or rented,
secondly, the equipment required at the onset need not be specialised
to any degree, your average 9ft trout fishing outfit with a floating
line should suffice, as long as it is washed in clean water after
each outing. Thirdly the time they can be fished for is quite
extensive, with the fish returning from spawning and appearing
inshore around march, you may fish for them right through into
mid November if it is still mild, and during the hot summer months
when the rivers become a trickle, and with most branches of daytime
angling in the doldrums, Mullet sport is at its best... A walk round a habour or marina, along the tidal stretches of a river, or out into an estuary at low tide may find you encountering fish that are exhibiting the behavour similar to that of surface feeding trout taking buzzers, sometimes, and especially from a distance you could also be forgiven for thinking that these fish are shoals of huge Sea trout, and quite often they can be seen slashing around out of the water like a salmon trying to rid itself of sea lice. Later as the tide begins to run these fish can be seen larking about like lads out on the town on a saturday night, shoving each other about and generally behaving daft, this is a very important time for the mullet angler and i will elaborate more on this later. So how do we get to grips with the "Grey Ghost"..? I will attempt to gear this advice to someone who has never
fly fished for Mullet before, yet i must assume that they have
grasped the ability to cast a fly with a reasonable amount of
acurracy and presentational skill, To give yourself the best chance of actualy hooking a mullet, its very fair to say first and foremost that when targeting roaming sea fish, success evolves around a pure numbers game, and one should look to seek out the highest densities of fish that remain in the smallest area practicable for the longest time possible, actually finding the fish can be very easy as the Mullet is very forthcoming in revealing itself most times, and all it takes is a leasurely stroll with a pair of polaroids to locate them, you can then track their movements, learn how they are affected by differing tidal movement and then put your action plan into place. There are thousands of mullet venues right around the country, each unique in character, but for now lets consider the location below, the very bottom of a small river where the fresh meets the salt, probably one of the most typical and well known locations for mullet to "hang out".....
You may see that beyond the rivers outflow there
is a distant sand spit, the tide floods in from the right of
this image and turns left through 180 degrees around this spit,
filling up behind it. At low tide all that remains is a shallow
channel between here and the spit, during the hot summer months
the Mullet are quite content in sittting here waiting for the
tide to run, this will eventually backup the freshwater, and
they can proceed to enter the lower river.
Looking slightly inland now, we can see that there is an area of fast streamy water which is very shallow, this natural obstacle is perfect for the Mullet angler as it will halt the Mullets progress in entering the river and dissapearing upstream, In keeping with the above criteria "high fish numbers in a small area for the longest period of time", an "Ambush" style approach will be very effective in this location, especially for instance when a 7.4 metre tide is predicted, as it will just about reach this streamy water at full tide and will see that unless the river is in slight flood, the mullet will not go over these stones, they will make their way up as high as they can on the very front of the tide and will spend time searching out and feeding in this exact area. Taking these conditions into account i will continue with the fly and tactics i put in place for when the fish are present. Mullet are known to feed on microscopic plankton which they filter out by ingesting surface detrious, this is of course impossible to imitate, they also feed amongst weed beds and on maggots in rotting seaweed. By and large the most succesfull fly pattern i use is one which represents a piece of bread, please dont ask why they take a fly that looks like nothing encountered in the river, lets just be glad they do.....myself and many others have tried many different tyings to achieve this bread flake effect, and i will now share with you the simplest tying that i find to be taken with most confidence by the fish. My favoured hook for this job is a Partridge Barbless Shrimp hook, Size 16, a good strong hook with an offset point to assist setting. White tying thread is wound down from the eye to the start of the bend and then dubbed with small pinches of white rabbit fur pulled from a typical zonker strip, when twisting the fur onto the thread i chose to ensure i only catch in about 10% of the furs length, and i wind the thread as many times as needed till the fur stands up vertically, working back toward the eye as we build it up should eventually amount to a pattern that looks like this..
y favorite fly rod for the task in hand is a 9ft Sage TCR5# and i have adapted a 6# Loop Opti Stillwater WF flyline to suit my needs, simply by cutting off the head, reversing it and using it as a shooting head attached to running line, i have placed the short abrupt backtaper which once met the running line now to the front, this ensures excellent turnover at close range, even with two or three of these "heavy wet" flies on the leader, but again any WF flyline which is not to long in the head should suffice, at least up to casting two of these flies. I chose to make up leaders with Seaguar flurocarbon, around 10-12 ft in length, ensuring that each reduction in diameter as i step down the leader ends up slightly shorter in length than the last size above, finishing of with 3ft of 5lb tippet. The Mullet take the fly quite confidently when the fly is presented sub surface, the make up of the fly and the use of flurocarbon which sinks is a combination which enables this to occur effectively. It has became common knowledge that to "chum" the area beforehand with bread is the accepted technique for "gettting the mulllet to feed", and although unnesacary, at times it does have the merit of showing you that the fish are still present, but for the instance above where the river is low and we are fishing a reletively small tide, i dont feel the need for the use of bread, this fly on its own will work very well. As stated earlier, when the tide begins to run, the fish are aware of what is going on around them and they seem to wake right up, the behavour exhibited at low tide was seemingly just a warm up, as now the mullet are flashing there sides, searching up and down, left and right, colliding with other fish, and are generally not as wary as they were when sat in the channel at low water. Chosing a position downstream of the natural obstacle, i crouch and wait for the fish to come to me, and come they always will, an angler who choses to bound up and down the bank looking for the fish will end up very frustrated, Mullet are very intolerant to low frequency thuds, and once they are scared they will simply become very difficult to catch. If the angler choses to remain stationary and low he will be suprised at just how close the fish will come in, he will be even more suprised when the fish takes the fly from just beyond the rod tip.. The casting angle is dependant on the depth of the water, but
generally the technique is none to different to that of upstream
dry fly fishing at an angle of around 45 degrees, we are seeking
a drag free drift for as long a time as possible with the fly
floating straight downstream at the exact same speed of the water.
Many times have i watched in inquisitve Mullet come to the fly
towards the end of the drift, only for it to be rejected as the
fly began to swing slightly. If we can make this cast upstream
then make use of an upstream mend we can make the fly fish slightly
deeper as the tide backs up further. When the Mullet takes, should you be fortunate enough to see it occuring, you can set the hook with good efficiency, if however you did not see the take, what can happen is quite similar to hooking a Salmon, in that the line will appear to have stopped as if it is snagged, a raising of the rod whilst holding the running line will suffice until we feel the weight of the fish as it moves, we now know its a mullet and now we can increase the tension to set the hook, but by this time the Mulllet will have gone into overdrive and will already be stripping line off the reel anyway. The fight of a Mullet is for the most like a Chub on amphetamines and steriods, the initial run can last until the full flyline has emptied from the reel spool, and all you can do is hold on or be prepared to follow the fish, whilst still at this stage of the fight what you will fiind is that if you make any attempt to bully the Mullet into stopping it will simply pull back harder. A 7lb fish will take about 5 minuites to feel like you are starting to get somewhere with it, but dont be fooled at this stage because just when you may think that it is safe to attempt to land it, the fish will draw a huge amount of strength and will probably take another 25 yards of line from your reel, watch that handle!!! When the Mullet is on the bank, please respect the fact that this is a very slow growing fish, if you have caught a 6lb fish, chances are it will be in excess of 15 years old...!!
Just when you thought you had him beat, he is off again in a flash.......!
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