Yelloweye Mullet

A yelloweye mullet is yellowish brown above and silvery white below, with a golden eye, pale fins with dusky edges, two short dorsal fins set well apart, and a forked tail. Fishes of Australia gives a length to 50 centimetres, usually to 30. The Status of Australian Fish Stocks report for 2023 gives a maximum of 44 centimetres and ten years of age.

It is an omnivore, eating algae, crustaceans, molluscs, invertebrate larvae and detritus, and the crustaceans are the part of that diet a fly can imitate.

Southern Australia, coast to coast. Fishes of Australia gives northern New South Wales, with one record from Shoalwater Bay in Queensland, around the south to the Swan River at Perth, and possibly north to Shark Bay, including Tasmania. It also lives in New Zealand.

The 2023 stock report describes schools in nearshore marine waters from the intertidal zone to at least ten metres, and fish that are often abundant in estuaries and the lower reaches of rivers. It assessed the stocks in South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia, and found all four sustainable.

In this guide yelloweye mullet have been recorded in the Merri River between 1980 and 2024, both above and below the Bromfield Street weir, and in the Snowy River between 1980 and 2018. These are survey records, not fisheries.

A fish of sand and mud. Fishes of Australia says it lives in temperate inshore and estuarine water, usually over sandy or muddy bottoms, and that it usually inhabits bays and estuaries, often around mangroves. It forms schools in water to about ten metres.

The 2023 stock report says fish mature at two to three years old, at 20 to 26 centimetres.

How much anglers take varies by state. The same report puts the South Australian recreational catch at about 11 tonnes in 2021–22, Tasmania’s at 4.6 tonnes in 2017–18, Western Australia’s as negligible, and says yelloweye mullet are rarely encountered in Victorian creel surveys. Fishes of Australia calls it an important commercial and popular recreational species in New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia.

The sea mullet is the other mullet most southern anglers will see, and the two share estuaries through New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. Look at the eye and the base of the pectoral fin. Fishes of Australia describes the yelloweye’s golden-yellow iris and notes that it has no dark spot at the pectoral-fin base. A sea mullet has a dark bluish spot there. The yelloweye’s two dorsal fins are short-based and widely separated.

Nobody we read writes about fly fishing for yelloweye mullet in Australia. The closest useful account is from Brittany in France, on the JP Ross fly rod company’s blog, written about other mullet species: small nymphs imitating tiny crustaceans, green flies fished just below the surface, and all-marabou nymphs, worked on the incoming tide in calm, shallow water where fish can be seen. Its warning applies to any mullet: the mouth is sensitive and quickly detects anything wrong with what it has taken.

A yelloweye’s diet includes crustaceans, so the same idea is worth trying here: a small shrimp or scud pattern, fine tippet, a slow retrieve, and fish you can see feeding. The scuds and shrimp page covers the flies, and polaroiding covers finding the fish. Expect to work it out.

It depends on the coast. Fishes of Australia says fish in Western Australia spawn in winter, while those in eastern waters spawn in summer.

Rules for mullet differ by state, and not every state lists yelloweye mullet by name. Check the current guide for the state you are fishing.

Look at the eye. A golden-yellow eye and no dark spot at the base of the pectoral fin mean yelloweye. A dark bluish spot at the pectoral base means sea mullet.

We found no Australian account of fly fishing for it. A small crustacean pattern is the best bet, because most of the rest of its diet, algae and detritus, cannot be imitated.

Because it is part of what makes an estuary work. Fishes of Australia calls it an important food for marine predators, and the estuaries where it schools are the same ones that hold bream and perch.