Spring in our bit of the Eastern Caribbean usually brings stiff sea breezes and an end to the wet season, but not this year. This year it has just kept on raining, and raining, and raining. I have been wanting to try some stream fishing, but heavy rains bring flash floods, and flash floods here are no joke – picture a wall of muddy water six feet high, barreling down a ravine with all the speed and fury of a runaway freight train. Standing in streams in not where you want to be during the rainy season. But finally, after a few dry days in early March, I woke up to clear skies and decided to head out in search of Mountain Mullet.
Mountain Mullet are fairly widespread in the warmer latitudes of the Americas. they are a diadromous species of fish, the adults spawn in freshwater streams or rivers and the eggs drift into the ocean where they hatch. The juveniles grow initially in saltwater before returning to freshwater to live out their adult lives. They can be caught on the fly and I have seen fish up to about a foot long (I’ve seen references that say they can grow to more than two feet), but other than a few people catching them in Costa Rica, they don’t seem to be a very popular game fish.
All of my fly rods are back in the United States so I had to get a little creative. I made a nine foot tapered leader and then tied it to the top guide of my seven foot long light-tackle rod, sort of a jury-rigged tenkara rod. I wasn’t sure what type of flies the mullet would take so I tied on a very small brown and grey nymph, a bit like a simplified hare’s ear pattern. When fishing for a new species, one way to know that you are at least on the right track is if you see very small fish getting excited about your fly. Right away I noticed little fingerling mullets swarming my fly, and it wasn’t long before I got lucky and hooked one at the head of a small pool.
My initial strategy had been to drift my flies through spots the same way I would approach a trout stream, but that didn’t seem to work very well. Instead, the fish seemed to prefer a bit more action, so I began to cast and then twitch my fly back across the current. With a bit more experimentation I was able to hook a slightly larger specimen that was holding over a shallow gravel bottom.
I didn’t see many fish bigger than this one. I suspect they are farther upstream, but those areas will have to wait until we are more truly into the dry season.
The Fishing Dojo 