Fly fishing for mullet in Narrabeen Lake

Mullet are a fun fish to target on fly, particularly for anglers new to the sport who are keen to practice their casting at a species that willingly takes a fly and fights well on light tackle.

Bread flies on a dry-dropper rig

I have found that in my neck of the woods (Narrabeen Lake) mullet respond best to bread flies. The rig I use is a simple one of the dry-dropper style used for trout fishing. I use a bread fly tied from white foam as the floating fly, with a dropper of 15-20cm to a bread fly tied from white egg yarn that sinks just below the surface.

The benefit of this rig is you can use the white foam fly as the indicator to help you tell when mullet strike the submerged fly. It is also an each way bet – most of the mullet I catch eat the submerged fly but the bigger mullet I’ve hooked tend to strike the foam fly.

Bread berley for mullet

Bread berley is an essential ingredient for a successful session chasing mullet. The berley attracts mullet into your fishing area and keeps them there. I usually take half a loaf of white bread with the slices cut into small squares. To start with, I’ll throw out a piece of berley every minute or so to attract the fish, but once I see them splashing on the surface I don’t use as much berley, only a piece here and there to keep them feeding. I’ve found that too much berley can drift in the wind and take the fish away, as well as attract seaguls which scare the fish.

Another benefit of bread berley is that it attracts other species into the area that will take your bread flies. Bream in particular, and not small ones either.

Evenings work best for me

In my experience fly fishing for mullet in Narrabeen Lake, the magic time to fish is at dusk. Once the sun goes down the wind tends to drop and the mullet feed more aggressively over sandflats. I’ve noticed that a pair of sea eagles, which often fish the same flats as me to far greater effect, are less active towards nightfall. Perhaps this contributes to mullet losing their inhibitions at dusk.

Here’s a video of a fly fishing session for mullet at Narrabeen Lake, using the dry-dropper rig technique with a foam bread fly on top and a suspended bread fly underneath: