Birthday Mullet

Back from our trip to the UK and my birthday today. I really wanted a birthday mullet, a feat I've only managed a couple of times over the years back in Hampshire. So I headed back towards the estuary that had been producing so well before our trip away.

A few minutes fishing was enough to tell me the number of mullet in the pool had reduced significantly over the past fortnight, and on this very neap tide there was no chance of any more arriving on the high water a couple of hours hence. So I fished patiently hoping for a chance with whatever mullet were left trapped in the pool.

After the thick end of an hour, my float bobbed then slid away, and I struck into a mullet. It put up a decent fight but obviously wasn't a massive fish, and after a few minutes this thicklip of 3lbs exactly was in the net ...

After this everything went very quiet for another hour or more, then I started getting regular bites all from the left hand end of my swim. They weren't strong bites, just barely sometimes getting the float under before it popped back up. I missed loads of them before hooking a mullet of about a pound in one of its ventral fins! A few minutes later I had another one of similar size this time fairly hooked. 

I decided not to grind on for what looked like little reward, instead I headed back towards home and stopped to look at some shallow swims near the head of Dunmanus Bay at Durrus. We'd seen some mullet along there as we drove back onto the peninsula after our trip away  - the first this year spotted in the Bay - but today there was no sunshine and a stronger ripple. I waded and fished for an hour but only saw one swirl that may or may not have been a mullet.

Still, birthday mullet achieved, very happy.