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So the chances are that most of the mullet caught that are not thick lips, and almost certainly those
caught on ragworm baited spinners, are going to be thin lips. But just in case, fold the pectoral fin
forward. If it fails to reach or just touches the margin of the eye it's a thin lip, whereas if it reaches past
the margin of the eye it's a golden grey.
Basic colouration and patterning seems to follow a similar format for all three home water grey mullet
species, that being blue or grey on the back and upper sides becoming silvery lower down and along
the belly, with several longitudinal stripes running along on each side.
Obviously, golden greys also have the golden spots on the cheek and gill cover from which they derive
their name. Unfortunately, used in isolation, these are not enough, as I have also caught thin lips with
golden markings around the gill cover area with just the very occasional genuine golden grey in amongst
them, despite at a glance perhaps thinking we had caught more.
This is a paradoxical fish in that throughout much of Europe it is a rare, or should I say rather localised
fish, yet within favoured locations it can also be extremely abundant. Find one thin lipped grey mullet
and you invariably find large numbers of them. Let me quote an example I am familiar with which
Keith Philbin, Steve Lill and myself turned up completely out of the blue.
During the late 1970's when my kids were young, I used to trail a caravan down to Christchurch in
Dorset, which obviously meant that I couldn't also trail the boat down there to fish. So on the first
weekend, my boat partner Steve would trail our sixteen foot Mackay Viking down, stay for the weekend
to fish, then repeat the operation on the last weekend to drag it back home, meaning that in fact I could
actually have both.
At the same time, Fleetwood charter skipper Keith Philbin and his family would be in the caravan next
door, and we would explore either the Solent out from Lymington if the wind was right, or when the
tides were right and the weather wasn't, put the boat in at Pontins on the River Stour and explore the
stretch from the slip down to Mudeford harbour instead.
We liked to go early, often launching around five am before all the holiday makers in the self-drive
motor boats took over the place. There wasn't any sort of a game plan to it. More a case of taking
everything tackle-wise we could muster along with a load of fresh ragworm and simply making best
use of the boat.
Not being shore anglers, we were fairly resistant to mullet fishing, though we had both read and heard
about the good mullet potential in and around Christchurch harbour.
On a number of occasions I had seen anglers float fishing for thick lipped greys and even tried it myself.
You could see the things swimming around all over the place, but amazingly, all I could catch was
freshwater bream.
I also had to put up with kids throwing stuff into the water, which seems to be a juvenile genetic trait,
and let's not forget families feeding the swans with all the commotion that involves. Needless to say,
after a couple of attempts I gave up trying, which was when we switched more of our attention to the
boat.
Much of the lower Stour, certainly when travelling down it by boat looks inaccessible, or at best
problematic, which meant we pretty much had the entire place to ourselves.
We'd also heard that there were bass and sea trout to be had on spinners in the lower reaches, plus lots
of flounders, which would not only take the ragworms, but also give chase to a moving bait, particularly
if something in the way of 'bling' catches their eye.
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