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First ever Mullet!


PaddyX21

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Made my first attempt at Mullet fishing yesterday, is probably just aswell i'm a patient guy!

 

Venue was easy as I live on a houseboat, on the River Medway, just where the M2 Motorway bridge crosses it (Borstal)

I fished from just prior to hightide and then most of the retreating tide (11am til ~5pm, high at 11:45)

I have never seen any sign of mullet around here, but know they appear all the time just downstream at the Strood / Rochester bridge so thought it worth a go. Also I had never seen any lip marks etc previously.

 

I started on a ledger rig for a while with no luck, or any signs. Moved onto a float rig and continued with no even a hint of life, with notable exception of two small jellyfish!

 

Anyway, bored by this stage I was sitting on the end of the boat with my feet dangling inches above the water, mesmorised by the float in that trance familiar to most anglers, when out from under the pontoon arrive a large mullet (5lb+?) scoots up to the boat right under my feet, helps itself to one of the floating bits of bread caught in the eddy, and promptly continues upstream, feeding at the surface.

Needless to say that stirred me somewhat, and I move the float well down the line to reduce depth and came in much closer to the boat. While I was doing this I heard a sound like a whale breaching, and same said mullet was back making a highspeed pass along the pontoon floats, leaving lipmarks and making the sound.

As I watched him continue downstream I became aware of sucking around my feet, and then virtually handfed an even larger mullet with no fear at all with free offerings! Unable to pass up the chance I then fed him my hookbait - struck and pulled it straight out of his mouth! Well either he didn't notice or didn't care, as I repeated this 3 times before finally getting the hook to set in his lip. He acted bewildered for a while and then shot off downstream and just ripped line off the spool; a run 40 - 50ft before I could stop him. After a fight that seemed to last hours (probably only 10-15mins) he was tired and came towards me, and then promptly threw the hook and went on his merry way!

A slight sense of humor failure may have occured at this point :)

 

It was at least another 30mins before the Mullet returned, this time in force, 3 or 4 nice fish feeding on the bread in the eddy.

At this point I was pretty much freelining my bait in with the rest of the offerings.

This is the point at which I hooked another nice fish, although smaller than the previous - very strong fight but without the long distance runs.

Whilst this fight was going on I got the missus to take pictures the the other mullet who were still feeding completely un-spooked by the fish fighting only yards away - see below;

 

DSC00995.jpg

 

DSC00996.jpg

 

The fight was quite long again but eventually I was rewarded with my very first mullet;

 

DSC00998.jpg

 

DSC00999.jpg

 

Very pleased would be an understatement!

I had no scales at all with me unfortunately, so if anyone is especially good with mullet (gu)estimation I'd be interested

Working back from the photo, the distance across my fingers is ~3", and this makes the fish a little over 21" snout to fork.

 

The mullet were around for the next couple of hours or so but much more easily spooked.

I more than once watched a 2½lb mullet swim right upto the hookbait, even open it's mouth ready and then turn away at the very last second, perhaps spotting the hook, or some unnatural movement of the bait.

 

Still thought I'd share it

Tight lines

Patrick

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Nice one Patrick .. welcome to the wonderful world of medway Mullet :D

 

Phil

 

 

oops .. sorry .. guess (although it's not easy with mullet - high variation with length / girth) 4lb to 4.1/2lb +/- something in that sort of order

 

 

Thanks Phil,

 

Have spent many an enjoyable afternoon at work reading your online fishing diary (assuming it's you!!) - indeed it's the first thing I came across when searching for what I could expect to catch in the Medway!

Would be fair to say it's what got me interested, so if that's not a success, I don't know what is

 

Interestingly(or not if Mullet aren't your thing!) the fish didn't move a muscle once out of the water, not one twitch or wriggle - not all all what I was lead to believe, also it didn't leave even one scale in the net, but it certainly had more than its fair helping of slime, was like a tench!

 

P

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nice 1 mate. Looking like a very healthy medway mullet of around the 4lb mark.

 

I hav'nt mullet fished for about 2 months now with new job, new car etc.

 

You fancy a trip sometime to the civic or something????

 

Regards

 

matt

Hia's All

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Thanks all - much appreciated!

 

Matt - yeah, I'm sure a trip to the Civic centre could be arranged, would be nice to have someone to fish with actually.

 

P

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Followed up with a smaller one today;

DSC01002.jpg

 

Odd shape to it - well muscled chunky fish upto the rear two fins (ventral + ????) then a thin spindly tail, which incidentally isn't under the tape measure it just stopped there, the bottom fan being missing.

Gave very little 'fight' as was unable to pull all that hard, but I still made sure it was properly tired before netting it - didn't really want it flapping about and hurting itself.

 

Slightly at odds with my only other capture;

DSC01001.jpg

 

Tried a spot of night fishing for the Mullet last night aswell, and although I didn't land one, they were definately feeding, and I did get a run off something that broke my hooklength :(

They were 'snatching' at the food offerings much more than during the day, which gave very positive bites when they came.

I think I'll try that again soon!

 

Also talking to some of the other boat owners who have been at the marina years, they do get a few mullet around the 9lb mark on a regular basis, so at least i know they are there! Whether they come on the tides when i'm fishng or not is another thing!

 

P

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