Maddening, Marvelous, Mullet!

A few days after my first visit I managed to get back to the mullet mark for a couple of hours in the afternoon and began the same procedure. I mixed a tin of sardines with a loaf of bread and mashed it up with water, before throwing in a few tennis ball sized handfuls. Within minutes I could see the swirls of mullet feeding on the bread. This surprised me somewhat as it was really quite rough with a good swell running. The mullet didn't seem to mind though and were happily feeding on the bread. I pinched a small bit of flake onto the shank of the hook and cast into the feeding fish, almost straight away the float sailed under and I struck into the fish. It came to the top pretty easily and I suspected it wasn't a mullet. Indeed it turned out to be a small bass that had been gorging itself on bread, I quickly landed and released the little blighter where upon friend of the blog Frazerio turned up.

I carried on with my mullet mission while Frazerio concentrated on the bass. I was getting a lot of dips and knocks on the float but I always like to wait until the float actually goes under when fishing for mullet. It didn't take too long before it did vanish under the surface and I struck into another fish and this time there was no mistaking its fight, mullet! It thrashed on the surface, stripped line on powerful darting runs and then tried to get into the rocks beneath my feet before it was landed by Frazerio lending a hand with the net. They really are such a hard fighting fish and I gazed down at my prize, my first thick lipped grey mullet this year, splendid. The fish was about 1.5lbs and I released it after a couple of photos, which were hard to take as the light was dimming rapidly!

I love fishing for these "grey ghosts", they are a real challenge!

Frazerio had now been persuaded to try for the mullet and so I lent him a stick float and some shot so he could try for them too. I managed to hook and lose a couple more fish before I struck into another fish. This was smaller than the first but still gave a ridiculously good fight for its size but I managed to coax it into the net in the end. It turned out to be a rather large golden grey mullet, a real specimen in fact! I quickly unhooked and weighed it. It came in at just over 13oz, a new Scottish record and a personal best for me!

At 13oz this golden grey beats the Scottish record by 2oz, I practice catch and release so will not claim it!

I hasten to add that I cannot claim it as a record as the truly out of date rules require you must kill the fish to prove how big it was, a practice that seems to be left over from Victorian times! I released the fish after a couple of photos which again proved problematic as the light was dimming rapidly. In fact I could only manage another ten minutes or so before the light had become too dim to fish with any degree of accuracy, so deciding to go out on a high I called it a day. I left Frazerio still trying valiantly for the grey ghosts and I don't think he will need much persuasion to come back on another mullet mission, and for what its worth neither will I!

Tight lines, Schogsky.