MULLOWAY
MANIA How To Catch Jewfish On Lures
I n d i re c t re s p o n s e t o t he hu g e d e m a n d fo r m o re n it t y - g r it t y i n fo ’ a b ou t t a rg et i n g jew ie s o n l u re s ( s o ft a n d ha rd ) — e s p e c ia l ly d u r i n g d a y l ig ht hou r s — St a rlo s ha re s a l ifet i m e o n le a r n i n g i n t hi s ex p o s é , w r it te n fo r a l l y ou jew ie n u t s ( a n d b u dd i n g jew ie n u t s ) ou t t he re ! L e a r n ple nt y a n d i n c re a s e y ou r st r ik e ra te o n t he s e c ha l le n g i n g f i s h .
MULLOWAY
MANIA Big mulloway or jewfish are peak predators with strikingly handsome looks. No wonder they’re so keenly sought after. ABOVE
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I
By Steve ‘Starlo’ Starling
M U L L O W A Y
D R E A M I N G
n the filtered half-light of pre-dawn, the school of mulloway slip westward through a series of inter-connected sandy gutters, pushing slowly inshore toward the river mouth; smelling, tasting and feeling the last eddying vestiges of a big runout tide. Several fish in the school have full bellies already, last night’s squid and tailor digesting in their distended stomachs. These successful hunters dawdle near the back of the flowing procession. At the front edge, a lean, hungry vanguard push forward, eager to satisfy the gnawing emptiness inside. Bridge pylons loom suddenly from the gloom, already painted on 50 sets of lateral lines via subtle disturbance to the slackening tidal push. A cloud of juvenile luderick, tailor and bream dash in panic behind the weed-festooned supports, but several are not quick enough. Jewfish backbones crack audibly in the milky water as predators swing hard left and right, jaws lunging and snapping, fins flaring. Dislodges scales twinkle in the dancing light shafts. Several mulloway peel off and carve fast figure-eights around the
MULLOWAY MANIA — how to catch jewfish on lures
other pylons, seeking more targets, but the residents are fleeing fast. Small terrified fish bulge through the surface layer in panic and a pair of watchful pelicans swoop from the bridge railing, careening onto the green water, giant bills dipping and clacking angrily. Death strikes from above and below. Within minutes the pylons are deserted of life, save for the heads of tiny brown leatherjackets, peering sheepishly from the kelp fronds like a cast of forgotten extras in a “Finding Nemo” sequel. Upstream of the bridge, the school slide over sandy ridges into a deeply scoured depression. There’s now no discernible tidal movement at all. The jewfish swim in a loose circle, rotating anticlockwise in the hole, moving just fast enough to push water through their mouths and out over their gills, pewter flanks occasionally brushing their neighbours, bellies and fins flicking swirls of sand from the river bed.
The lateral lines and other sensory organs of mulloway are extremely well developed. These fish are very “situation aware” and often highly cautious.
Like the first puff of a southerly change through an open bedroom window, the pre-pulse of a new tide pours over the sandy lip, into the staging hole. It tastes of the ocean… Cooler, saltier, more oxygen-rich than the brackish river water. Several of the hungrier mulloway reflexively snap their jaws open and shut in giant, exaggerated yawns and the swimming speed of the entire school picks up a gear. Two more complete circuits, then a larger fish pushes urgently to the head of the queue. Instead of wheeling left and swinging into another turn, the big jewie suddenly lifts up and over the edge of the hole, belly just clearing some rocks. The others follow, a quicksilver stream of scales, fins and jaws heading inexorably upriver. They are moving faster now, on the very front edge of the new tidal push, fanning out and forming into smaller squadrons. Brains dimly but surely imprinted with the memory of successful hunts lead them unerringly to specific nooks, with the accuracy of GPS units. A gap between boulders where an octopus once found itself caught in the open. A rusting shopping trolley sometimes festooned with baby tarwhine. A current break where mullet hang lazily in mid-water, as if sleeping briefly on the slack water. For the next six hours and more the attacking force will leapfrog each other up the big river, holding for a minute or two here, half an hour there. Some will peel off into feeder creeks, pushing so far inland that startled bass dart behind their snags as the heavyweight hunters pass. A few of these marauders may stay in the upper estuary for days or even weeks, until the next set of spring tides, but the majority will mass up again in some distant staging hole on the top of the flood, then turn and begin their downstream campaign of pillage and death on the run-out. And so the cycle goes… On and on, as it has for millions of years.
MULLOWAY MANIA — how to catch jewfish on lures
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THE REAL WORLD The picture I’ve just painted may or may not be an accurate rendition of exactly what happens on an east coast estuary anywhere between Bundaberg and Barwon Heads on most big tides of the year. Without either access to data from a detailed sonic tagging and tracking program or becoming a mulloway myself for a day, I’ll probably never know for sure! But it certainly feels right to me, and tallies closely with my practical observations in the real world. The more I fish for mulloway on lures—perhaps the most challenging and addictive target on offer in our southern estuaries—the more I see parallels between these great fish and the saltwater barramundi of the north. Physical similarities aside (and there are many), I firmly believe that these two unrelated hunters have evolved to fill similar niches in their home rivers, and that they share an uncannily similar hunting style. My theory is that both species are much more mobile and versatile than many anglers realise. There are good reasons why they are best caught in specific locations on specific stages of each 28-day tidal cycle. Yes, obviously, it’s because they are in those places at those times (and feeding). But the corollary of that theory is that they are somewhere else and doing something different at other times… If I could only work out where and what, I’d be a much better jewie fisher than I am! Meanwhile, let me tell you a little about what I do know:
The big news is that jewies will take lures even in the middle of the brightest, sunniest days... 4
MULLOWAY MANIA — how to catch jewfish on lures
Jewies have a decentsized mouth and conical, inward-facing teeth to hold and crush lively prey. LEFT
TIME AND TIDE
Some of the things we know for sure and certain about mulloway (and the saltwater barra they share so many habits with) is that they are active nocturnal feeders with an armoury of sensory equipment ideally suited to feeding in very low light and/or dirty water (these include specially adapted eyes, lateral lines and smell/taste receptors). For a long time, I suspect that this knowledge actually clouded our view of how and where jewies can best be caught. That’s because, while they’re masters when it comes to poor visibility hunting, this information certainly doesn’t mean they only feed at those times. That discovery is very good news for people like myself, who prefer to catch their jewies (and barra!) in daylight hours, on cast-and-retrieved lures. The big news is that jewies will take lures even in the middle of the brightest, sunniest days, and that they don’t necessarily require the protection of great depth, dirty water, nor milky wave-induced aeration to do so. Myself and others have proven this many times, regularly experiencing our best lure casting sessions for mulloway between the hours of 8 and 11 AM, and again between 4 and 7PM in the evening, and even catching these fish around mid-day at times. Furthermore, our best results have often come when fishing in relatively clean water with a depth of somewhere between three and 10 metres, and most commonly close to what I’ve come to see as the “magic” six metre contour (around 20 feet on the old scale). To take this to its MULLOWAY MANIA — how to catch jewfish on lures
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