Mullet mayhem

Published in the Asbury Park Press 10/04/02

By NICK HONACHEFSKY
CORRESPONDENT

Look and listen. The backwaters of Absecon in South Jersey are stunning in their picturesque and serene beauty. But listen closer: there is something downright mean going on in them.

You hear a little splash here, two more splashes there. There is a strange silence for a second or two. Before you can turn your head and locate where you thought you heard that last splash, there's an eruption and the waters surrounding you are ripping, crashing and churning like a tempest unbridled. Mullet are jumping everywhere -- out, over, around each other, running for their fates, fighting for their lives from predators below. The vicious scene is being played out and in a split second you witness the childhood game of hide-and-seek transformed into a more primal game of a sinister nature -- be unseen or be eaten. Except there are no next games for the ones who are found. These mullet in Absecon live their lives on borrowed time.

Dave Showell, owner and operator of Absecon Bay Sportsman in Absecon, knows mullet and knows the Absecon backcountry. Showell does not just simply fish these backwaters, he has co-existed among them for his entire life of 48 years, which makes him, in many residents' opinions, the foremost authority on their happenings. He remembers the exact hole in the specific sodbank back here where he angled his first striper, and he recalls the grassy jutting point where he caught an 8-pound weakfish late last night. With this kind of firepower and wisdom on our team, these mullet, and their backwater predators, didn't have a chance.

Hucking our gear onto the decks of Showell's Goose Buster, an 18-foot Bayrunner camouflaged back-bay duck boat, Guy Jackson and I shoved off to do the one thing that would almost guarantee fish in the cooler -- capture with a cast net and then liveline these hapless mullet.

Currently, droves of mullet are schooled up and are moving in and around the channels, sticking close to the sodbanks and cuts.

"I haven't seen this many mullet stacked up back here moving through like this in quite a while. You have to sort of sneak up on them, to cast net them. They're fast, real fast, and if they see you coming, if you make the wrong move right before you throw, you'll come up with an empty net," Showell mumbled to us with his net in hand and teeth, poised on the bow for a throw.

Showell obviously heeds his own advice, because we motored in ever so slowly and cut off the schools of mullet against the banks, whereupon Showell launched his 8-foot cast net of quarter-inch square mesh with the dexterity of a Roman gladiator and the accuracy of a sniper onto school after school of mullet. He didn't come up with any empty nets. After three or four throws, mullet in the 3- to 6-inch range were slapping on the deck and were immediately funneled into the full livewell. With our boat weighed down with fresh mullet, Showell turned the steering wheel toward a weakfish sweet spot called the Crosstides.

"You see the point there?" Showell asked as he pointed to rippling waters, "those mullet are pinned, by bluefish on top, but there'll be weakfish under them."

The engine was snubbed and we started our drift with the last of the incoming tide.

In a flash, Guy grabbed his rod, a 6 1/2-foot Shimano Compre V-Series, fixed with a Fin-Nor Megalite 4000 and spooled with 14-pound Silver Thread. For a leader, Showell always recommends using a 24- to 36-inch piece of 20-pound fluorocarbon for livelining, which is tied via snell or Palomar knot to a size 4/0 or 5/0 Gamakatsu Octopus style hook, in either Bleeding Bait Red or standard Black colorations. A Rubbercore sinker in three-quarter to 1-ounce weight is added to the line roughly 30 inches up in order to get the feisty mullet down in the zone, unless of course, you want to run through your entire catch of mullet in about 5 minutes livelining to the bluefish that are omnipresent.

Guy hooked his bait through the lips and dropped in. I dropped down to the bottom. Dave cast out a bit, and we began our first drift of the point.

"The last of the incoming is a prime time to liveline. The mullet load up back here. These 3- to 4-pound bluefish on top are cutting these schools of mullet into pieces, and below, weakfish, stripers, and fluke are gobbling them down as they fall. Get your bait on or near the bottom, because . . ."

Showell was jolted into interruption in mid-sentence as his rod bent over like loaded catapult, the tip pumping in short bursts. Naw, what is this, some kind of early morning television show? This kind of stuff happening? Dave played out his fish, with tell-tale signs it wasn't a herky-jerky fighting bluefish. The runs were methodical and powerful. As he maneuvered the creature on the end of his line around the stern back and forth a few times, a shiny flank sparkling with purple, yellow and silver finally surfaced off the port side. Guy pulled the net from the holder, swung it deep in the water, and placed a flopping 6-pound weakfish onto the deck, mullet hanging out of its mouth.

"Because weakfish will hammer live mullet," Showell said, finishing the thought. So this is how it's done back here in Absecon? Is this the mullet madness that will take us on through the fall?

We motored up and did the drift a second time to prove it. Schools of bait were jumping and getting worked from every vantage point. Before I could get my bait down to the bottom, it was picked up and streaked so fast the line snapped out of my hand, almost cutting my finger. I closed the bail and set back hard. Boom! My drag started to sing, but it was not a strong song of a weakfish, it was a battling chopper bluefish. With nothing but a mono leader, he snapped off at boatside spitting up chunks of mullet in my face as he sounded.

The bluefish pop up everywhere, and they have no qualms about slicing your live mullets in half as soon as you get them in the water, and then coming back to finish the job.

Guy hollered, "Holy mackerel! Look at those bluefish pouncing on those schools. Those bluefish look like they're going to jump into the boat!"

No sooner did he finish his sentence did we hear some loud thuds against the side of the boat, mullet practically knocking themselves out and bluefish banging their heads chasing them. It's no joke. It's like playground bullies hammering kids for their lunch money. The outcome of these blitzes is unfair, and not favorable for the mullet.

We continued our drifts at the Crosstides. Bluefish after bluefish would try to steal our baits before they could get down below, but if you could get past them after the first two or three seconds, you were in weakfish territory. And we found them. Altogether, we mustered a nice catch of six other 4- to 6-pound weakfish. We released most of our catch.

Showell decided to pick up and make the move to Mankiller Island, a place where Dave loves to find weakfish and bass when the tide starts to move back out.

"The waters around the sedges at Mankiller create some cross rips, the mullet get confused here, and stripers and weakfish prey on them," he said. Dave flipped out his lively mullet. Guy dropped his back down to the bottom. I was immediately unhooking a bluefish. Between releasing another nine weakfish, and countless blues, we all flirted with the idea of re-rigging and dropping some bucktails down to jig up some fluke, since we were fishing on the last day of fluke season. Re-rigging with bucktails? After hearing our thoughts out loud, I think Showell cast some sort of voodoo spell with the Absecon backwaters, because things got interesting.

Photographer Dave May felt a few taps on his line and voiced his situation to us. He set back hard and his rod bowed like a somber rainbow almost touching the water.

"Whooaaa. This isn't a weakfish, and it's not a bluefish," he said. His rod pumped intermittently in heavy lunges. "He's comin' up. Get the net. He's flat."

He's flat all right. He was six whole pounds of flat. What a fluke! And on live mullet! The last day of fluking, and we keep hearing on the VHF static on the outside that nobody's really putting any good numbers of fluke in the box. They sure are in the back by Absecon -- on mullet.

Needing more mullet, we moved to where Showell cast netted enough to get us through the rest of the day. On a calculated whim, we decided to head back to Mankiller. The tide was clearly coming in now, and we had a stronger drift than before. The mullet were sent down. As we drifted, Showell fueled our imaginations of what is going to happen back here in about three weeks when the waters cool down into the 65-degree range and lower. Bass. Striped bass by the thousands. And it's going to be a whole bucket of fun, all at the expense of the mullet run. As we dreamed up visions of playing out stripers in the cool fall air, Dave's rod bent over again, in some sort of the same fashion that occurred when a certain 6-pound fluke hit about one hour ago.

"This might be another flounder. It feels pretty big. Get the net," Showell mentioned to Guy and I. The pulsating rod fought with every ounce of stiffness it was made for, but still seemed to be getting beaten. In a split instant, a shade of brown, a flat brown, could be seen about three feet down. Guy grabbed the net, and Dave steered what looked like a wider and flatter fluke than we had in the cooler with a mullet half inside its mouth. The fluke was brought up to the surface, Guy lunged with the net, and got him. He lifted the net and in an instant we all had that odd, sick feeling of getting a second-place medal when you know you should've had first place, as the sheer weight of the fish broke the netting and the fluke slapped back into the water hell-bent on getting back home. I couldn't believe it! Still on, Dave fought the flattie, his line through the net, until the fluke busted him off. A fitting way to leave the fluke season, donating a big one back to bring us more for next year.

Showell, in all his modesty and refined dignity and knowledge, showed us that livelining mullet is the ticket to catching some serious weakfish, fluke and bluefish in the Absecon backwaters, and it's only a matter of days until striped bass move in and take over the scene, gorging themselves with the baitfish. Personally, I can't even sleep knowing what awaits in the Absecon backcountry, as mullet jump over fences in my head every night until I'm back there again. Seriously, don't miss out on this opportunity. Dave Showell and the Absecon Bay Sportsman can be contacted for up to the minute information at 609-484-0409 or you can visit him at www.abseconbay.com

Nick Honachefsky is a correspondent for Hook, Line & Sinker.

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