Mullet Love Affair Part 2

Last week, I wrote about the history of mullet fishing on Bogue Banks: the kind with tractors and wooden boats sitting pretty on the beach, like in my sister-in-law Summer Flowers’ photograph above.

This week: the present and future of that tradition.

I spoke with Chris Lewis, a tractor driver for the only crew still catching mullet this way. He’s been doing it for almost forty years, but he predicts this year will be the last. It breaks his heart and mine.

Mullet are a slippery, funny fish. If you’ve ever had a fish slap you in the face, it was either a Monty Python joke or a jumping mullet. Once, I took my kids swimming with a school of mullet, just so they could experience that sensation. They’ll thank me later.

Striped mullet (Mugil cephalus) grow a foot or two long and get their name from the black stripes on their sides. They have eyes that stick out of their heads (“popeyes”) and leap like they’re on trampolines (“jumping mullet”).

Mullet are bottom feeders, and they don’t take bait readily – they’re best caught with a net, not a pole. Though they’re oily, strong-tasting fish, I love them fried, grilled, or smoked. But my tastes are questionable: I also eat sardines and anchovies. I’ll eat anything, really.

Though I like the fish itself, it’s the roe that brings profit at market – it’s used in various Asian dishes, and I’ve heard of locals salting and drying it or frying it for breakfast. I would love to try that, but I fear I’ll fall in love and get arrested for harassing the female mullet.

That’s a real possibility. Not only because I love fishy fish and regularly fail to acknowledge legal boundaries, but also because regulations on mullet are becoming stricter. Studies showed the mullet population was overfished, so this year the season closes November 7th to protect the seed potatoes for spring planting. I mean mullet eggs for spring hatching. Fishing restrictions protect future supply, but they don’t go down easy.

Not only can the beach tractor crew not harvest mullet this year after November 7th, no one can catch mullet for bait or the backyard grill after that date. If one jumps up and slaps you in the face, you can’t slap back.

So, the fish must be caught now or never.

Trouble is, the tractors are ready. The wooden dories are ready. The nets and crew are ready. But the fish are not ready.

In order to catch mullet for their roe, the eggs must make up at least 15% of the fish’s body weight; this happens over the course of their spawning season, but they’re developing later than they used to. They’re also shifting north, changing their migratory patterns. The mullet aren’t where they’re supposed be, when they’re supposed to be there. Slippery little fish.

Also, the wind must be right, or the nets tangle. Can you imagine untangling hundreds of yards of fishing net? To work the shore from Atlantic Beach to Salter Path, the fishermen need a northeast wind. Otherwise, the ocean is too rough. To work Salter Path to Emerald Isle, they set on a northwest wind. South wind? No fish.

Yet the mullet blows, steady sustained winds from the north, aren’t coming in October like they used to – winter is arriving later; fall is warmer. It’s almost like the climate’s changing…

The mullet beach fishing, however, has not changed. The Farmall tractors are from 1942-1948, and the nets are set at the same places they were a hundred years ago – Clamrock, the Tea House, Salter Path, Bogue Inlet. In this way, the fishing crew connects to their grandparents that started the tradition long ago.

Here’s how it works:

1. A net is strung from a post on shore to an anchored post ( the”back staff”) in the ocean near the breakers. This part of the net is called the inshore lead and runs roughly perpendicular to the beach.
   
2. The net turns 90 degrees from the back staff, running parallel to shore, until it reaches another anchored post, the “end staff.”
   
3. The nets have corks along their tops and lead weights strung along their bottoms. There are wooden support rods running from the top to bottom to keep the nets from closing and help them stay upright.
   
4. The crew waits for mullet to accumulate in the “bowl,” the L-shaped area where the inshore and offshore nets meet. When enough mullet are trapped, three crew members run the boat, two drive tractors, and two are tie-on men. Others help pull the nets ashore.
   
5. One end of a long net is tied to a tractor, and the rest goes in a boat, which motors out to the end staff, cutting around the school of mullet. The boat feeds out net as it reaches the offshore lead, makes the L-turn to follow the inshore lead, and reaches the shore, where it is tied to the other tractor. It encircles the bowl.
   
6. The center of this net is the “bunt,” which has two inch mesh (and yes, Salter said “marsh”) rather than the wider mesh of the rest of the net, making it stronger.
   
7. The tractor drivers now must match the ocean current’s speed along shore as they pull the net full of fish in toward the beach. They must keep the bunt parallel with the shore and move gradually toward the beach – they can’t let the net pinch together so the fish escape or pull it too wide to tear.
   
8. Once the fish are on shore, they are scooped with buckets into the beds of pickup trucks. Sweep nets, held by two people, are used for large catches. The fish are then driven to the market. Later, everyone hoses down and dances the mullet dance.

If you see a cookie crumb trail of mullet flopping in the road and scattered over the Atlantic Beach bridge, the Bogue Banks crew has landed a haul. It could be the last.

Lewis began driving a beach tractor when he was fourteen years old, in the 1980s. At fifty years old, he would keep driving that tractor it if he could. He wants to pass the tradition to the next generation, the youth want technology and flashy jobs, not slippery stinky popeyes on a cold dark daybreak in October. The fishermen wear sunglasses not because it’s bright outside but to keep the mixture of fish goo, sand, and salt out of their eyes – it’s not pretty work.

Lewis fishes for the love of tradition, the fellowship among men he admires, and for the connection to his elders, like his grandfather, who worked the same tractor, the same beach, the same fish. It’s their way of life.

Fishing regulations make the mullet season too short. The fish have shifted north, the mullet blows come too late, the population is smaller, and they don’t make tractors like 1940s Farmalls anymore. They don’t make fishermen like 1940s Salter Pathers anymore, either – few people have the skills or desire to run a beach seine mullet operation. But just because a tradition is ending doesn’t mean it should be forgotten or erased.

How will we remember? How will we honor local history? How will we speak up for a vanishing coastal culture?

The mullet moratorium this year is not a popular policy. However, it is a first step; a more nuanced plan will be enacted next fall. Currently, Marine Fisheries is weighing input from an advisory committee (which includes traditional beach mullet fishermen) on options such as quotas, gear restrictions, days of the week, etc. They may allow the beach seine nets, tractors, and wooden boats to resume next year. They may not.

Marine Fisheries will take public comment at the Islander Hotel on Wed. November 15th after 6pm and Thurs. November 16th after 9am. If you, too, would like to see the tractors, dories, and salty fishermen set their nets as long as they’re able, I hear it’s lovely at the Islander this time of year. Good luck finding fried mullet, though.

– Jessi Waugh