estuary mullet

Tried baited (ragworm)mepps spinners for estuary mullet. Getting lots of follows, but few takes. Any ideas?

Hello Bob,
Try groundbaiting with bread, and when they start feeding on it freeline well covered hook over their noses.
Luck
willie.....

Hi Bob,
Remove the hook from your spinner and attach a pennel rig to it. Mount your worm by threading the bottom hook through the length of the worm and nick the top hook (nearest the spinner) into the head.
Other than that, try speeding-up or slowing-down the retrieve.

USE THE FLATIE SPINNERS THE ONE THAT YOU TIE OU OWN HOOK AND LINE ON,try an 8 inch hook lenght on a 1/o sea hook or long shank carlise hook, let some worm dangle it gets them going, try not to use the pennel it puts them off.if its got a run a 1-2 oz lead straight through trotted along the bottom does the trick as well

we take lots of mullet in Portugal on fish guts held on the hook with nylon taken from a old pair of tights, try smashing up Sardenes and using this as ground bait

I''ve caught mullet on lugworm legered on the bottom for flatfish in the west of Ireland, but also heard of cheese wrapped in muslin being used, maggots (ugh!) but the bottom line seems to be to ground bait with the preferred bait, be it bread, worms, etc. I am also experimenting with a coarse fisherman's swim feeder filled with fresh peeler crab meat but whilst it has been successful (very!) it has not yet taken mullet. In Belfast Lough there were reputed to ground bait with boiled cabbage and use par-boiled stalk as the bait!

floating crust at ringsend in dublin did the trick for me 3 weeks ago

I realise I'm rather late in responding to this, but I've only recently acquired a computer.
Depends whether your mullet are thicklips (Chelon labrosus) or thinlips (Liza ramada). The latter will, I'm led to believe, take baited spinners (and unbaited, too on occasions). The mullet featured in John Wilson's excellent Christchurch Harbour TV programme were thinlips.
Thicklips rarely respond to spinners, whether baited or not.
Bait-fishing is best for thicklips; they have local preferences, though. For my Medway estuary mullet fishing I've tried sweetcorn, mini-ragworm and cockles without success. All my Medway thicklips have fallen to bread. From Southend Pier, as a teenager, I caught on mini-ragworm, and saw them caught on ham-fat and herring-roe.
So the two main species of grey mullet found off our coast are bait-specific, but trouble is it is virtually impossible to distinguish between them in the water because they look near-identical. You need to catch one to know what you are fishing for... if you see what I mean!

Good answer James.

I never knew there were so many experienced Mullet fishermen in the UK - it all makes me want to try it!

I have caught mullet years ago off the Natal coast. All they would look at was bread, although a friend of mine did quite well with the fly rod using GRHEs

I am not sure what species of mullet they were down there. They looked identical to the mullet we catch here and they fought just as hard too.

I've heard of mullet being caught on fly; most, I suspect, are thinlips. Bob Cox caught a thicklip from Essex (Crouch or Blackwater, I think) on a sandeel imitation streamer-fly; but subsequent efforts were unsuccessful despite there being plenty of fish in the area. I've tried half-heartedly in the Medway, but without so much as a follow. Mike Ladle catches thicklips on the Dorset coast on maggot flies (polyethylene body baited with live maggots) when mullet are feeding on seaweed maggots. But that's "using fly tackle" rather than "fly fishing".
Techniques such as fly fishing are obviously worth trying, and are certainly of academic interest, but for consistent success with thicklips I think we are best advised to stick with bait fishing. Even bait fishing is not without problems, though. Mullet demand good presentation, which means relatively fine tackle, but they fight tremendously hard and tend to live in snaggy environments (rocks, weed, pier piles etc), which makes the use of fine tackle hazardous. Answers on a postcard, please...!