For more than a century, commercial fishermen have been gathering on some of Queensland’s most popular beaches every winter, poised for action as a cool breeze blows.
Their four-wheel drives, stacked with metal cages and boats piled with fishing nets, take up room usually reserved for sunbathing holidaymakers.
It’s mullet fishing season along Queensland’s southern coast as the fish migrate north to spawn during the colder months of the year.
The practice of fishing for mullet with nets off the beach, and the highly prized licences, are passed down through the generations.
“I do it because that’s virtually all I know and I’ve done this since I was a little kid,” commercial fisherman Michael Thompson says.
It’s a test of patience as fishers spend hours and sometimes days waiting in the thick, salty air, only putting the boat in the water at the right moment.
“I’m looking for a dark shade in the water with fish jumping out of it,” Mr Thompson says.
That dark shade is a giant circle of mullet spawning in the water and from the air, it looks like a choreographed dance against the emerald, watery backdrop.
The circle moves away from the rocks into the shallows, a signal that it’s time for surf lifesavers to close the beach and for the fishers to launch their boats.
Marcus Koina works in a boat that corrals the school of mullet.
“The net is piled in the back of the boat and as you go it creates a semi-circle around the fish and you hook it up to the ute,” Mr Koina says.
The ute then pulls the net and its catch to shore.
“All the little fish flow through the net and they go to live another day, where the bigger fish are captured,” Mr Thompson says.
“Some years we only catch 50 tonnes and others we’ll catch up to 100.
“There’s very limited bycatch with the method that we’re using.”
In keeping with tradition, bystanders lucky enough to see a catch pulled in can nab themselves a fresh fish for just $2.
“With the cost of living going through the roof, a lot of people are coming down to buy cheaper fish,” Mr Thompson says.
Where do the mullet come from?
Sea mullet live in estuaries, freshwater and waters adjacent to the coast, but the fish travel to the ocean for their annual spawning migration.
Catching them in nets off the Queensland coast is permitted by the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries only from April to August.
For conservation reasons, the department does not issue new licences, but existing ones can be transferred.
Mr Thompson says, at Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast, the migration lasts about two months from June to July.
“Sometimes it’ll go out to 10 weeks if the temperature of the water doesn’t drop fast enough,” he says.
“Some fish come out of New South Wales, all along the coast out of Moreton Bay, everywhere, but the majority of the fish that we catch are coming out of the Pumicestone Passage.”
Most mullet in Queensland are caught from Hervey Bay southwards and much of the catch is sold commercially, with some females sent overseas for their eggs.
A dying art
With no new licences available, Mr Thompson says catching mullet off the beach is a dying art.
“Most young people don’t even have an interest in what we’re doing, let alone understand how to make a net or mend a net,” he says.
“It’s documented over 100 years of doing this exact same method that we’re doing.”
But the fishers hope the tradition will be kept alive for the next generation.
“Everyone deserves fish,” Mr Koina says.
“The person that’s walking along here that has no idea how to catch a fish, that’s who I work for.
“I’d love to do it for the rest of my life.”
