How Do You Catch Mullet Fish in Florida?

Florida anglers catch mullet with a cast net thrown over a school they have already located. Rule 68B-4.0081 of the Florida Administrative Code allows a hand-thrown cast net of 14 feet or less in stretched length, measured from the horn to the lead line with the net gathered and pulled taut, with no more than two fished from a vessel and one by a person on foot. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) sets the recreational limit at 50 fish per person per day and no minimum size. Hook and line is legal, and it works with a small hook, bread bait and chum, but it accounts for almost none of the harvest.

Data supplied by FWC's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program put cast nets at roughly 100% of striped mullet landed on Florida's east coast and about 70% on the west coast, with beach seines taking the rest. Success here is decided before the net leaves the hand.

What is the legal limit, and where does it change?

Rule 68B-39.004(1) states that a recreational harvester may not take or possess "more than a total of 50 striped and silver mullet in aggregate per day." Vessel limits move with the calendar. From September 1 through January 31, more than 50 mullet aboard a vessel is prohibited however many people are fishing. From February 1 through August 31, a vessel carrying two or more harvesters may hold 100.

There is no recreational minimum size. Commercial harvesters work under an 11-inch fork-length minimum, so a fish that is legal for a recreational cast-netter can be undersized on the commercial dock next door. The statewide season is open year-round, with two local exceptions:

• Pinellas County (68B-39.0045). From October 1 through January 31, the limit drops to five striped mullet per person per day inside Riviera Bay, Papy's Bayou, Smack's Bayou, Snell Isle Harbour, Coffee Pot Bayou and the portion of Tampa Bay between them, with the same five-fish cap on the whole vessel.
• Punta Gorda, Charlotte County (68B-39.0046). From November 1 through the last day of February, harvest and possession of striped mullet inside the described area is prohibited from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.

The wording deserves attention. FWC's mullet regulation page lists four species under one set of limits: Mugil cephalus (striped), Mugil curema (silver or white), Mugil gyrans (fantail) and Mugil rubrioculus (redeye). The rule text counts only "striped and silver mullet in aggregate," and both county rules name striped mullet alone. An angler holding a mixed bag of white and fantail mullet in Punta Gorda at 7:00 p.m. is reading two documents that do not say the same thing. FWC is the authority on both, and the safe reading is the stricter one.

Striped or white? The identification decides which rule applies

The comparison that matters in a Florida estuary is between the two species that share the same water and the same bag limit but not the same closures. FWC's species profiles give three field characters, none of them size.

| Character | Striped mullet (M. cephalus) | White mullet (M. curema) | Fantail mullet (M. gyrans) | |---|---|---|---| | Body markings | Bold horizontal stripes | No prominent stripes | No stripes; gold/orange patches on body | | Opercle (gill cover) | No distinct color | Gold/bronze spot on opercle and upper iris | Gold/orange patches on opercle and upper iris | | Soft anal rays | 8 | 9 to 10 | 8 |

The Florida Museum of Natural History adds a second check: white mullet carry scales onto the soft dorsal and anal fins, striped mullet do not. The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries flags the trap in the stripe test, since striped mullet under about 6 inches have not developed stripes yet, which is the size class that fills a bait net in September.

Size separates the adults cleanly. The Florida Museum records striped mullet to 47.2 inches and 17.6 pounds; FWC describes white mullet as common up to 13 inches and under 2 pounds. The calendars differ too. White mullet spawn offshore in spring, according to FWC, while the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission plan compiled by Leard and colleagues puts striped mullet offshore from mid-October through late January, peaking in November and December.

Where mullet hold, and the conditions that put them there

Temperature sets the outer boundary. Reviewing the literature for its striped mullet management plan, the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries reports that the species does not appear to live permanently in water below 16°C (about 61°F), citing Collins (1985), while fish above 50 mm prefer 19.5°C to 29.0°C, roughly 67°F to 84°F, and juveniles under 50 mm prefer 30.0°C to 32.4°C.

Salinity is a weak filter. Specimens have been collected between 0 and 75 parts per thousand, with a preference band of 20 to 26 ppt, which covers most of a Florida estuary. Depth is the useful number. Once inshore, mullet prefer water 3 meters deep or less, about 10 feet, which is also the practical limit of a cast net's sink rate.

Movement is seasonal and weather-driven. The same review attributes increased migration to north and northwest winds and cold-front passage, citing Jacot, Apekin and Vilenskaya, and Mahmoudi and colleagues, and notes that hurricanes and an unseasonably warm fall can delay it. In the Gulf, adults have been documented moving 40 to 50 miles offshore over water more than 3,280 feet deep to spawn.

Florida-specific tracking is thin. Myers and colleagues, in Marine and Coastal Fisheries in 2020, tagged 32 striped mullet in the Indian River Lagoon and got usable tracks from 18. Before exiting to the ocean, tagged fish made repeated movements just inside the inlet entrance, and two left in December and February rather than during the historic October to November peak.

Does tide stage matter?

The common advice is to fish a falling tide at an inlet. No published Florida study supports that specific claim. Myers and colleagues mapped the Indian River Lagoon inlets without reporting an ebb-versus-flood analysis, so the rule of thumb rests on angler observation rather than measurement.

Two published findings do connect mullet to tides. The North Carolina plan cites Greeley, Calder and Wallace (1987) for spawning around new and full moon spring tides, at night, near the surface. Working in the southern Gulf of Mexico, Castellanos-Juárez, Mendoza-Carranza, Pacheco-Almanzar and Ibañez reported in Environmental Biology of Fishes in 2024 that spawning runs nearly synchronously across the Gulf, and their group has correlated monthly tide averages with spawning migration at r = 0.84. Their explanation points to meteorological tides, the wind-driven rise in sea level produced by north winds from September through November.

What the evidence supports is fishing the days around the new and full moon during a north wind, and treating a specific tide stage as a local preference.

What cast net is legal in Florida, and which one to buy

Article X, Section 16 of the Florida Constitution, effective in 1995, banned gill and entangling nets in state waters and capped other nets at 500 square feet of mesh area inshore and nearshore. FWC's implementing rule adds the detail that matters at the tackle counter: a monofilament net that is not a hand-thrown cast net or a hand-held landing or dip net counts as a prohibited entangling net, and nets other than cast and dip nets are held to 2-inch stretched mesh. Seines must also stay under 500 square feet and cannot be monofilament. In fresh water, cast nets are capped at 1-inch stretched mesh.

Manufacturer specifications sort the rest. The Betts 2020 catalog lists its Mullet series at 1-inch mesh in 6- to 12-foot radii, 1.2 pounds of lead per radius foot, rated for bait 12 inches and up in medium to deep water; the Mullet Cast Nets line, stock 18-6 through 18-12, runs 1-inch mono at 1.25 pounds per foot. The same catalog puts 3/8-inch mesh on 2- to 5-inch bait in shallow water, the finger-mullet net, and 1/4-inch mesh on 1- to 2-inch bait. Fitec sells lead per radius foot in 3/4, 1 and 1.5 pound grades, so a 6-foot net at 1 pound per foot carries about 6 pounds of lead, and Calusa builds its six-panel nets at 1.5 pounds per foot, putting a 10-foot net at 15 pounds.

A working sequence with that gear:

1. Locate a school by sight, surface disturbance or jumping fish, in water 10 feet or shallower.
2. Position within the net's radius without letting the boat or your shadow reach the school.
3. Throw so the net opens fully and lands ahead of the school's line of travel.
4. Let the lead line reach bottom before pulling, so the perimeter closes under the fish.
5. Retrieve with steady pressure on the hand line to purse the lead line shut.
6. Count the catch against the 50-fish daily limit and the vessel limit for that date.

A Florida saltwater fishing license is required to take marine organisms, cast netting included; anglers under 16 are exempt, and residents 65 and older may carry a no-cost certificate.

Why hook and line so rarely works

The obstacle is anatomical and behavioral. Adult striped mullet are what Bishop and Miglarese, cited in the North Carolina plan, called interface feeders: they take food at the water surface, at the bottom, or off the surfaces of objects, and only occasionally take mid-water items, including an angler's live bait. The Florida Museum describes the feeding action as sucking up the top layer of sediment, with a diet of detritus, microalgae and zooplankton. A fish that grazes sediment has no reason to chase a lure.

The agencies say so plainly. North Carolina's plan states that "few anglers target striped mullet by hook and line." The Seafood Watch assessment of the Florida fishery, published in December 2023 and reviewed for scientific accuracy by Dustin Addis, who leads the marine fisheries stock assessment subsection at FWC's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute and co-authored Florida's 2014 striped mullet stock assessment, records that the species "is fished recreationally in many states ... primarily with cast nets ... because it is not easily caught by hook and line."

No Florida agency publishes a recommended hook size. FWC's mullet page lists five gear categories, hook and line, cast net, seine, spear and gig, and stops there; spearing mullet in fresh water is prohibited, though gigging from above the water is allowed. Angling sources disagree on the number: some specify a No. 8 or No. 10 hook with a 6-pound fluorocarbon leader and no weight, others put the range at No. 10 to No. 14. They agree on the reason for going small, the size and softness of the mouth, and on chumming first with bread, oats or pellets and suspending the bait under a float.

What a successful mullet trip looks like in numbers

The commercial record shows what an efficient day looks like. NOAA figures in the Seafood Watch assessment put Florida's 2021 striped mullet landings near 4.5 million pounds, about 2,000 metric tons, with 1,725 tons on the west coast and 307 on the east. More than 80% of that comes during the October-to-January spawning season, when schools are dense enough that a caster throws at a target rather than at water.

For a recreational angler the ceiling is 50 fish, reachable in a handful of accurate throws over the right school and unreachable in a hundred throws over empty water. The measure of the trip is whether the school was found, and whether the net that reached it was legal for that county on that date.

Questions Florida mullet anglers ask

What is the best bait for mullet?

Bread. Fresh white bread pinched onto the hook, or a flour-and-water dough ball firmed up overnight, fished over a chum slick of bread, oats or pellets. Mullet graze detritus and microalgae off sediment rather than chasing prey, so bait works only after chum has a school feeding.

Are mullet good to eat?

Yes. The Florida Department of Health's 2019 fish consumption guide places striped, white and fantail mullet from all coastal waters at two meals per week for every group, including women of childbearing age and young children. The exception is Escambia Bay and the Escambia River south of SR 184, at one skinless meal per week, because of PCBs.

What is the best time to catch mullet?

October through January, when striped mullet school for the offshore spawning run and more than 80% of Florida's annual landings are taken. Movement increases with north and northwest winds and cold fronts. One trade-off: from September 1 through January 31 the vessel limit drops to 50 fish, however many anglers are aboard.

What is the easiest way to catch mullet?

A cast net of 14 feet or less in stretched length, thrown over a school spotted in water 10 feet or shallower. Cast nets take roughly 100% of Florida's east-coast striped mullet landings and about 70% on the west coast, according to FWC data reported by Seafood Watch. Two per vessel, one per wading angler.

How can I catch mullet in Florida?

Buy a Florida saltwater fishing license, use one of the five legal gear types (hook and line, cast net, seine, spear or gig), and keep no more than 50 striped and silver mullet per person per day with no minimum size. Check the Pinellas five-fish limit and the Punta Gorda night closure first.

What rig is used for mullet fishing?

A small hook under a float, with light fluorocarbon and usually no weight, fished into chum. Published guidance disagrees on hook size, ranging from No. 8 or No. 10 with a 6-pound leader to No. 10 through No. 14. No Florida agency publishes a recommended size; FWC's rules name gear categories only.