Smoked Mullet

Smoked Mullet: A Mayport Thanksgiving Tradition

 by

Alec Newell


Mayport Village 1950's-60's, courtesy of Sandra Tuttle

 

Thanksgiving Day signals the kick-off of the Holiday Season, with roots and traditions that stretch back to the Autumn of 1621, when the Massachusetts Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians met for a communal feast  to celebrate that year's Fall harvest.  For most Americans a turkey dinner has become the centerpiece of that tradition, but what many Americans do not know,  is that the first Protestant European Thanksgiving celebration in the New World occurred in 1564 near Mayport, 57 yr. before the Pilgrims,  and it is also very likely that smoked mullet was on the menu.

 

 Drawing by Jacques Le Moyne 1564, near Mayport.

Centuries before Laudonniere's French Huguenot Colony was established at Ft. Caroline,   Timucuan Indians had been harvesting the vast schools of mullet that migrate north along the St. John's River every year on their way to the Atlantic Ocean to spawn.  From Jacques Le Moyne,  Laudonniere's writer and artist, we have illustrations of native fish weirs for catching, and wood frame racks for smoking the fish.  The Timucuan word for these racks was buccan and barabicu.  The French adopted the word buccan, which becomes first boucane, then boucanier, a word used to describe European castaways or escaped sailors who foraged along remote beaches and cooked over crude open fires. The word has come down to us as "buccaneer."  The word barbacoa or barabicu, has survived pretty much unchanged as "barbecue," and thus the tradition continues.  To the villagers of Mayport, smoked mullet is as much a Thanksgiving tradition as  the turkey, which is also frequently served smoked.

 

 Robert Thomas at the Little Jetties, Sandra Tuttle

 

Before the ban on seine nets for commercial mullet fishing in 1996, Mayport  fishermen would camp out at the Little Jetties, often in very cold weather, and wait for the mullet to show.  Sometimes fishermen would build rude temporary structures of old railroad ties and tarps to break the wind.  To help ward off the cold, there was also usually a bond fire and whiskey. The season would run from about the first week in November, until just before Christmas.  Seine nets would lie piled up in flat bottom wooden boats called "bateaus" (emphasis in the first syllable), and  the boats sat on the beach until a school of fish was sighted.   The old boats were equipped with oar locks and rowed, later models  had "kicker wells" built into the middle of the boat that were designed to keep the two stroke outboard motor from fouling the nets.

Bateau 1950's-60's, Sandra Tuttle



When a school of mullet was sighted, a boat was launched, and the net was payed out to circle the school, then hauled back to the beach to pick out the fish.  There was usually an old baby scale on the beach so that passing motorists could pick out and weigh, their own fish from the net for the retail price of  25 cents a pound.  The rest of the fish were piled into a rusty pickup truck or  van and sold for much less at the local fish house.  It was said of one fish house owner, "When it comes to the benefit of the doubt, he gets the benefit, and you get the doubt."  It was not a job for wimps.

 

 

Little Jetties 1950's-60's, Sandra Tuttle

 



When the net bans went into effect, mullet fishing began to change.  Almost overnight, there was a demand for oversized, custom made cast nets that couldn't be bought in stores.  That niche market was pioneered by Mayport's own Joseph C. Brown, or "Mr. Brownie."   He is now well into his 90's, and is, I believe, still making, modifying, and repairing his specialty "Brownie nets."  Pickup trucks parked alongside his Palmer Street fence line in November, is a sure sign that the season is on.
 

The old wooden bateaus have been gradually replaced by mass produced, wide bottomed, fiberglass boats with the center console moved forward.  They are equipped with electronic bottom finders that can locate fish schools in deep or choppy water.  The new boats are called "bow riders" because they allow the helmsman to operate the boat from a standing position in the bow of the boat to spot fish more easily. One man runs the boat with an eye on the bottom finder, the other man helps to spot surface schools, and throws the cast net.  Today's mullet fishermen have nicer boats, better trailers, new electronics, and drive nicer trucks, but when you're throwing nets with an average radius of ten to fourteen feet, and weigh up to 35 pounds, it's still no job for wimps.

 

Bow Rider 11/2013, by Newell

 



There is only one big fish house in Mayport now, Safe Harbor, and they don't deal much in mullet  anymore.  Most of the buyers are seasonal truckers who are really only interested in buying female, or "red roe mullet" which they truck to a processer in Tampa, to harvest the yellow egg sacs for which there is a big demand in Asian markets.  The males, or "white roe mullet," bring fishermen only a small fraction of the price paid for the females, but are actually preferred now for smoking, because they are smaller and cheaper.  Catching, cleaning, and smoking mullet is still mostly done by hand.  It is a  labor  intensive process and the product is not usually sold in grocery stores.   When compared to factory processed sardines, kippered herring, or canned salmon, smoked mullet is a rare and exotic delicacy that makes for great holiday snacking. 



The Recipe

 

 11/2013 by Newell

Hickory nuts ripen and fall just before the annual mullet run at Mayport every November .  In the years before there was refrigeration, salt and smoking was the best way preserve meat or large catches of fish, and with the hickory nuts just laying around on the ground,  smoking mullet with hickory nuts was a practical and delicious no brainer.  It still is, but any kind of hardwood will work.  Fallen oak trees or broken shipping pallets, usually made of white oak, are passable substitutes and  easy to find, if you don't have access to a hickory tree.

 

 White Roe Mullet, 11/2013 by Newell



The most important thing to remember is to use the freshest fish you can find and keep them well iced until just before you lay them on the smoker.  Mullet is an oily fish that offers a perfect medium to absorb the sweet smoke, but the fatter they are, the more quickly they spoil. They should go from the net to the ice chest and die of hypothermia.  Lay them flat, then let them firm up from the ice before you split them.  To save time, leave the backbone in one side of the fish.  Scrape the excess fat and black membrane from the gut sac.  You want a cold fish and a sharp knife for the work.  Leave the skin and scales on your fillets, they will insulate the meat and keep it from sticking to the grill.  If you are cleaning a large quantity of fish, use an electric knife and remove the heads and tails, you don't need to waste grill space smoking parts of the fish you can't eat.  This part of the job is messy, so keep a water bucket handy to rewash your fillets before repacking them in ice.  At this point you can brine your fish over night  in ice,  or just shake salt and powdered cayenne pepper on them just before they hit the grill.  For purely a Minorcan style option, skip the cayenne, and just dress the smoked fish with datil pepper sauce when the fillets have cooled.



 

 11/2013, by Newell

 

The cooking temperature in your smoking chamber should between 220 and 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Cooking time is appx. two hours per rack of fish.  When the filets begin to firm up, carefully lift them from the grill and onto clean newspaper to cool and drain.  Presoak all of your hardwood or hickory nuts before putting them in the firebox, and keep a bucket of water or a hose handy to extinguish any flame ups.  You can use a bed of hot charcoal in your firebox to get started.  Add hardwood as needed, but don't use any fire accelerants after the cooking starts.

 

 

Happy Holidays!