The Mullet are back.

Mullet fishing in the harbour, could be one of my highlights this weekend. I have heard reports from a reliable source that the Thin Lipped Mullet have moved back into Weymouth harbour. This fills me with excitement, as I love fishing for Mullet, especially with lures. I have included the main part of an article I wrote a couple of

 There is no real need to go so lite, but I fancied the challenge. My Rod was a Tronix Pro Rockfish UL, rated at 0.5 – 7g and I was using a Mepp’s type spinner, modified for Mullet fishing.

A lot of people think that Mullet are one of the most difficult fish to catch, but I don’t agree. especially when it comes to Thin Lipped Mullet. They will readily take a Mepp’s spinner, baited with a bit of Ragworm,or Power isome if it is presented properly. If you get it wrong you could cast all day and get nothing. So I am going to give you a step by step guide on how to rig up a Mepp for Mullet.

You can use a traditional Mepp or one of the more modern Mullet spinners that uses a short section of wire to hold the hook off.

As you can see from the picture below, they come with a treble hook. The first thing you need to do is change the treble for a single size 6 hook on a short length of fluro carbon.

I like to make the hook length about 2 inches. Any shorter and they shy away, any longer and the number of hook ups decreases substantially.

The finished lure. In this case I have used large Power Isome instead of a Ragworm to tip the end of the lure. Power Isome has advantages and disadvantages over live Ragworm.

There are one or two rules that you need to follow that make the difference between catching quite a few fish and catching none or very few. Firstly and probably the most important is to make sure that the worm or Power Isome is rigged so that it is completely straight. So that when you retrieve the lure it comes back with the worm trailing straight behind it. If it is kinked or not straight the worm spins or rolls in a slow loop, that puts the Mullet off. This is where the Power Isome has a great advantage, as it is easy to keep straight and doesn’t often slip round the bend of the hook, even after the fish have mouthed it. The downside to Power Isome is once the fish have mouthed it they don’t like the taste of it and drop it pretty quickly. This results in a lot less hook ups but far more follows.

Once you have spotted a shoal of Mullet you have to cast from behind them. Cast the lure and get the blade of the Mepp  to start spinning as soon as you can get it to, other wise it drops to deeply and often comes up through the shoal and spooks them. A nice steady retrieve works best. Try not to spook the shoal, I know that can be hard.

What normally happens is one or more Mullet will spot the lure and detach from the shoal and chase the lure. keep your cool and just keep retrieving at the same pace. They tend to mouth there way up the worm until the feel the hook then turn away, resulting in them hooking themselves. Make sure you have a landing net and enjoy the fun of playing a powerful fish.

I have included a short and very badly edited video of me catching some yesterday. I will do a full video piece on Mullet fishing next month. I hope.

Another piece of good news is that the Launce (Greater Sandeel) have turned up on the Shambles. This is one of the indicators that Plaice and Turbot will follow very shortly.

Sea Conditions: Water temperature 8°c

Chesil Beach:  Small swell and almost clear water.

Portland:  Small swell with clear water

Portland Harbour: Calm with clear water

Weymouth Bay: Calm with clear  water

Chesil Beach forecast: it is a bit windy and miserable today, but the weekend looks pretty good. Don’t expect to catch too much from Chesil this weekend. Especially witht he smaller tides. Head to Abbotsbury if you are after some late Whiting and Dabs.

Portland: With very good water clarity, the Pollock and Wrasse fishing should be reasonable for this time of year. I think the colder months are better for Pollock than the summer ones. I have been making some lures to target the Pollock, which I am trying to make a video of. Watch this space!

Portland Harbour: Still pretty quite in the habour, but a few Flounder are being caught.

Weymouth Bay: As I mentioned above the Mullet have moved back in and will be my main target fish this weekend.

The piers as always will produce plenty of small Pollock, Pout and Wrasse. There is always the chance of some Herring.

Guiding: At this time of year, the guiding is pretty quite, so I normally use this time to do some basic fishing workshops. In these I teach all sorts of skills, that will give you a good grounding for your fishing adventures for the erst of the year. I am happy to do lure or bait sessions and the workshops are 2 hours lonng and limitied to 3 people. If you are thinking about booking a guided lure or bait session for the later on in the year, then now is the best time to do it, to grab the best tides.

This year we will be offering boat guiding sessions from your own boat, from Weymouth and Portland and shore guiding in the Poole and Purbeck area. If you want more details then drop me an email to [email protected]