Invasion of mullet cranks up the gamefish bite
When the fall mullet run is underway, waters churn with gamefish feeding frenzies.
Striped mullet, which anglers also call jumping mullet, finger mullet and other names, migrate along the Carolina coasts, often forming gigantic schools.
Mullet imitations abound, but styles and colors change constantly. Professional guides who are on the water every day must keep their clients “in the fish” to earn a living. So anglers should pay attention to the lures they choose.
Capt. Mike McDonald of Gul-R-Boy Guide Service (843-546-3625), fishes South Carolina’s Winyah Bay, launching his boat from South Island Ferry Landing. His favorite lure is a soft plastic because it catches speckled trout, red drum and flounder.
“My go-to lure is a Bass Assassin,” McDonald said. “The best color is Purple Chicken. It has a purple back, silver belly and chartreuse tail. The bright tail is constantly blinking, saying ‘Here I am!’ while the other colors make it look exactly like a mullet. Another good search bait is a 3-inch Z-Man 10X Tough MinnowZ in Opening Night color.”
McDonald rigs soft plastics on a white, ¼-ounce jighead for fishing most areas. However, he downsizes to a 1/8-ounce jighead when he fishes oyster beds.
“I keep the rod tip high to prevent the lure sinking deep enough to snag on oysters,” he said. “If I lose a couple of lures, I fish it on a Cajun Thunder or Comal Tackle Reddi Rattle float. I snatch the line twice to make the float click twice and let the lure settle until the float stands straight up before I do it again. If it doesn’t stand straight up, the lure is inside a fish’s mouth or hung in shells.”
Look for oyster beds
When he arrives at a likely spot in the marsh, he looks for schools with big, 6- to 12-inch mullet. As the tide falls, they gather at the mouths of small drains. If he spots oyster beds, he concentrates his efforts around them.
“An oyster bed pinches the current, narrowing the width of a drain and increasing flow velocity,” he said. “I fish upstream, downstream and on top of it. If I see mullet showering, I cast a topwater lure. My favorite topwater lure is a Heddon Super Spook Jr. in rainbow color (X9236SPTM). Trout really love that lure in the fall because it looks like a mullet. It works great anywhere during low-light hours, even when you don’t see mullet showering. Red drum really light it up then, too.”
Capt. Allen Jernigan of Breadman Ventures (910-467-1482) and Team Bumpin Mullet fishes the Southern Redfish Cup and Professional Redfish League. He also prefers topwater lures for red drum when mullet schools swirl. He guides at North Carolina’s New River, launching his boat at Snead’s Ferry BAA.
“I use a MirrOlure She Pup,” Jernigan said. “But I replace the factory hooks with VMC Permasteel 4X-Strong treble hooks. If you hang a big bull red, they hold better than factory hooks. They are also sharper so I get more hookups. My favorite colors are pink, white or blue-and-green. The redfish are below, looking up at all of those mullet swimming on the surface. When they hear that walking sound, they say ‘Hey, what’s that?’ The lure draws such a powerful reaction strike that I have seen them come from 10 feet away, making a wake to the lure to strike it.”
Spinnerbaits, popping corks
Jernigan looks for redfish making dimples and pushes in open water, or for their backs and tails sticking up from the shallow shoals and potholes. When mullet schools swim by their favorite ambush points, redfish explode on them because they are feeding ravenously, fattening for the oncoming colder weather.
“If they get so zoned in on mullet in shallow water that they won’t hit a topwater lure, I cast a spinnerbait and work it beneath the mullet,” he said. “Redfish will pound the spinnerbait when they can’t detect a topwater lure above a big mullet mass.”
Jernigan uses a Cajun Thunder Thunder Spin. He rigs it with a pink-and-green Saltwater Assassin paddle tail on a yellow jighead. The lure’s heavy-duty frame can withstand the strike and fight pressures exerted by a 36-inch red drum.
The same spinnerbait and topwater lures also catch speckled trout. However, when Jernigan fishes for specks specifically, he often works a popping cork.
“I use a Four Horsemen oval cork,” he said. “The wire through the float is so strong it won’t bend and it is weighted so you can sling it a mile. I tie on 30 inches of 20-pound leader and a 1/8-ounce jighead with a Saltwater Assassin in opening night color. If I am in an area where the trout were hitting in the morning and have shut off, I look for a nearby drop-off of 4 to 8 feet and cast the popping cork rig. I pop it twice and the light jig allows the lure to fall slowly with tail wiggling. It’s so tempting that a trout can’t stand it.”
Choose your colors
Capt. Mike Taylor of Taylor Made Charters (252-725-2623) fishes North Carolina’s Neuse and White Oak rivers, Queen’s Creek and nearby ICW and inlet areas. His favorite lure is a 5-inch Berkley Gulp Saltwater Paddle Shad.
“It is a phenomenal lure for redfish and trout,” Taylor said. “It is identical in size to the mullet during the fall run. Pearl white is a good color in any water. But if the water is really dark, I use root beer with a chartreuse tail.”
Taylor rigs it on a 1/8-ounce jighead and uses it as a swimbait, casting it along shallow edges, at oyster beds and in grass beds at high tide. He also fishes it as a twitch bait in small creeks near Bogue, Bear and Browns inlets. Casting the lure, he lets it sink to the bottom on a tight line. Then he pops it up twice with the rod tip and lets it fall to the bottom again.
Always watching for mullet with predatory fish crashing them, he keeps a topwater lure rigged and ready. His favorites are the MirrOlure She Pup, Heddon Super Spook and Super Spook Jr., and Rapala Skitter Walk.
“I like bigger topwater lures when it’s windier and rougher and use smaller ones when it’s calm,” he said. “With the Skitter Walk, I like the green top, silver sides and white belly. For all MirrOlure Top Dog series lures I like the 808 color (orange belly, gold sides and black back) or a pink belly with gold sides and black back. With Spooks, I use chartreuse with silver or gold sides. Greens and silvers make lures look like mullet in clear water and golds and oranges make them look like mullet in dark water. Mullet change colors with the water clarity.
Toss them a twitcher
Capt. Mike Taylor was the only guide of the three interviewed for this feature who said one of his favorite lures is a subsurface hard plastic. The advent of the soft plastic revolution has nearly relegated the use of hard plastics to a dying artform. His go-to hard lures are MirrOlure 17MR and 27MR twitch baits in the classic 808 color (orange belly, gold sides, black back). However, that only touches the surface of the many MirrOlure mullet-like styles, sizes and colors that indicate the overall effectiveness of subsurface, hard plastic twitch baits.
The original MirrOlure classics were the TT series and 52M series. The flat-sided TT (Tiny Trout) has specks on its sides, which distinguish it from the solid color sides and rounder profile of the 52M. The TT also sinks slower than the 52M, which has a sinking rate of approximately one foot per second. These original lipless twitch baits are reeled with a cast, countdown, reel, stop, twitch retrieve that imparts darting action to the lure.
The 17MR MirrOdine and, more recently, its larger version, the 27MR MirrOdine, were designed specifically to use as suspending twitch baits. That means they are more buoyancy-neutral. So they do not sink as fast when the retrieve is paused. They also have a different body shape that allows them to dig in and swim with a side-to-side wobble during a steady retrieve. The TT and 52M have little side-to-side wiggle or diving capability and are therefore more dependent upon the angler to impart lifelike movements by making pauses and twitches in the retrieve.
“The 17MR and 27MR are absolute murder for fishing the rivers,” Taylor said. “They catch everything – speckled trout, red drum, largemouth bass, bowfin. You name the fish and it will strike these lures. I fish them along shorelines, grass bed edges, oyster beds, boat docks and anywhere else I see schools of mullet working.”
Mullet Skin is a recent finish that makes the 27MR lure look exactly like a mullet. The model number is MRCS27-Mullet.
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