By Ed Killer for Martin County
Two of Mother Nature’s most awe-inspiring events coincide each year along the coasts of the Sunshine State – Hurricane season and the Fall Mullet Run.
For an angler, the former is a nerve-wracking ordeal. At its worst, it causes an epic disruption of one’s life patterns and daily routine. At its best, it creates gray hairs, weight loss, then weight gain, followed by a week or two of gloomy attitudes.
The latter is an adrenaline-pumping piscatorial pursuit. At its best, it results in bent rods, stripped drag washers, cracked guides, broken lines, salty clothing and a “perma-smile” emblazoned on one’s face. At its worst, the Fall Mullet Run lasts two weeks instead of two months, and the bait are hard to find because water is cloudy and we had a windy fall.
The Fall of 2017 is going to go down in the books as bad for storms, but above average for the mullet migration.
Hurricane Irma spared Martin County its worst shot, thankfully. Residents here prayed for those in other areas of the state more severely affected like the Florida Keys and Southwest Coast communities. Many pitched in to contribute supplies and materials for rebuilding those places, and offered their own sweat equity, too, in many cases.
Meanwhile, the mullet run began in earnest a week prior to Irma’s U.S. Landfall. Even the day after the storm’s eye pushed up across the Florida-Georgia state line, schools of finger mullet – named for their size, about as long as a man’s finger – began swimming shorelines from Jensen Beach to Hobe Sound gathering for the big push to their winter residency in Miami, the Keys or even Mexico.
The tarpon know this is going to happen every year. So do the snook. And the redfish, jacks, sharks, bluefish and Spanish mackerel, as well. September and October are bad times to be a mullet in Martin County waters, but it’s a great time to be an angler.
A fishing trip in the Indian River Lagoon, St. Lucie Inlet, along the beaches or up the St. Lucie River will resemble more like a National Geographic film. Scores of snook as long as a man’s leg can be seen making aerial attacks on schools of mullet two acres in area. Tarpon as big as a college co-ed will fly through the air doing cartwheels and back flips as if they were qualifying for the next Olympic gymnastics team. Jack crevalles resembling slender submarines will shower mullet onto beaches and docks, into boats and up against seawalls as they bomb mullet schools like a crazed dictator. In the trough at the beaches, watch your toes. Sharks can be seen beaching themselves like a bad SNL skit in an effort to gorge on mullet trying to escape their toothy jaws. These yearling mullet would rather die as fish out of water than fall prey to some of these top coastal predators.
Hurricane season is one of those inevitable things Floridians must simply survive through. No amount of complaining makes their impacts any easier to endure. But knowing than when it’s safe to go back outside again, the rivers will be teeming with mullet and action makes getting through them a whole lot easier.
A HUGE THANK YOU to Ed Killer, Outdoors columnist with Treasure Coast Newspapers and the USA Today Network for providing the copy.