People who complain that South Florida doesn’t have a change of seasons don’t fish the annual fall mullet run.
For local anglers, nothing signals that fall has arrived like the mullet run. That’s when schools of silver and black mullet migrate south along the Atlantic coast while being feasted on by a host of predators such as snook, tarpon, jacks, sharks, Spanish mackerel, and bluefish.
October is the prime time to fish the mullet run, both offshore and inshore. One of the attractions of the run is that anglers never know what they might catch from one cast to the next. Another attraction is that they don’t need live mullet to catch gamefish. Half of a mullet and a variety of lures such as topwater plugs and soft-plastic baitfish and shrimp imitations can be just as, if not more, effective.
Schools of mullet can appear suddenly and then disappear. Sometimes they linger inshore for several days before moving on. As Capt. Chris Murray of Stuart, who fishes offshore as well as in the Indian and St. Lucie rivers, said, “They come in in droves, and then they’ll pause and then there’ll be another drove.”
“They could be here for several weeks or a month,” added Capt. Mark Nichols of Stuart. “It just depends on whether the weather pushes them south.”
Murray usually cast-nets several dozen mullet wherever he sees the baitfish pushing water. After catching bait, he recommended that you cruise around until you spot another mullet school, then closely watch to see what the baitfish are doing and what’s feeding on them.
Tarpon often jump completely out of the water, then come crashing back into the middle of the school. Snook like to hang below the school and suck in mullet with an audible pop. Jacks will charge into the school and send mullet flying.
Murray likes to fish live mullet on a 7-foot light- to medium-action spinning rod with a 4000-size reel spooled with 20-pound braided line. He usually attaches a 40-pound fluorocarbon leader tied to a 3/0 Owner Mutu Light circle hook. He clips an indicator float to the leader, which allows him and his anglers to keep track of the bait.
“I vary my leaders. I like to actually start lighter,” Murray said. “Normally I rig up two that are 25-pound, two that are 30, two that are 40. When I know what kind of fish are there and what kind of heat I have to put on them, normally 40. If they’re small snook, 25 or 30 is fine.”
When drifting or slow-trolling, he hooks a mullet through the upper lip and has his angler cast it to the edge of a submerged oyster bar, which snook, tarpon, and other species use as ambush spots. Murray then has the angler open the bail of the reel and slowly let out the line.
Fishing in the St. Lucie River with Murray and Anthony Javarone, it wasn’t long before our mullet got nervous, then violent splashes appeared by the baits. Whatever went after my mullet missed, but a big fish nailed Javarone’s bait.
Following Murray’s instruction to let the fish swim for a few seconds before closing the bail and reeling the line tight, Javarone was hooked up to what turned out to be a 15-pound jack. The fish took Javarone from one end of Murray’s bay boat to the other before it finally tired. With a gloved hand, Murray lifted the jack out of the water by the tail, let Javarone pose with it for some photos, then released it to resume its mullet-marauding ways.
Big jacks also feed on schools of mullet traveling along the beaches and in and out of inlets. Tarpon and Spanish mackerel will crash into a mullet school, then they and snook, bluefish, and jacks lurking underneath gobble up the stunned and maimed mullet. That’s when fishing a mullet head on the bottom can be extremely effective.
Fishing around the rocks at the mouth of St. Lucie Inlet, Capt. Greg Snyder of Stuart uses a DOA plastic shrimp to catch snook ranging from under the minimum size limit of 28 inches to over the maximum size limit of 32 inches. He fishes the shrimp on a spinning outfit with 30-pound braided line and a 40-pound fluorocarbon leader.
“They use the rocks as a trap,” said Snyder of the snook. “The bait hits the rocks and gets confused and the snook take advantage of it.”
The key is to let the shrimp drift with the current and to be aware of any taps or hesitation in the drift, because that means a snook has taken the lure.
“Let the tide do the work and keep in contact with the shrimp,” Snyder said, “because you need to be able to set the hook when they eat.”
Why would a snook eat a shrimp when mullet are abundant? I posed that question to Nichols, the founder of DOA Lures.
“The first of the mullet run, the fish are all over the mullet,” Nichols said. “But after three weeks of eating mullet, they’re ready for something different.
“I think it’s just easy for them to eat a shrimp,” he added. “They have to work hard to catch a mullet. It doesn’t take anything for them to catch a shrimp.”
And when the mullet are running, it usually doesn’t take anything for anglers to catch a variety of gamefish.