When I learned that five bucks let me enter a dead fish-throwing contest in my new town, I was hooked. Now, fifteen years later, the cost has quadrupled, but the Pine Island Mullet Toss remains a bargain. The cutthroat field of competitive fish hurling was a mystery to me fifteen years ago. I didn't know any better, and so I put that naivete to the test.
Some background first—on Florida's Gulf of Jacuzzi, a mullet is far more than a stupid haircut. It's also a fish. Walleyed, blackish-gray, vegetarian fish with a reputation for sometimes tasting "too fishy," they're popular in Asia. Like Tom Waits and tentacles, they're big in Japan.
Mullet travel in large schools, with the occasional rando jumping and splashing for obscure, contentious reasons. Perhaps they're dislodging sea lice picked up in the vegetation they eat, or they might be packing down or stretching out their stomachs to make room for more food, or they're clearing a blocked gizzard, breaking open their egg sac, or jumping because they can and it's fun. Rationale aside, mullet like to leap and make as big a splash as possible, quite like dolphins. The similarities end there. SeaWorld doesn't hire mullet trainers. And those unclever walleyes remind me of our quiet, more inbred side of the family.
As long as there have been people on these barrier islands, there's been mullet fishing. The Calusa Indians plied these waters for over 1500 years before missing their vaccinations. Florida settlers continued to do so right up until the 1995 gillnet ban. Even sport fishermen struggle to gauge the success of one of that law's "good intentions"—bolstering gamefish populations—while another result is not up for debate. The ban devastated working-class fishing folk, including three hundred families on Pine Island alone. Unmoored, many fell destitute as divorce, addiction, and suicide rates spiked, just three measurable effects after 1995. The gillnet ban spelled an absolute bloodbath for mullet fishermen, with no family escaping untouched. Following the ban, commercial fisherman Tootsie Barnes said, "I've been pretty depressed. It's like somebody locking you up in a prison. Fishin's all I ever done." A few short years later, Tootsie was gone.
Over on the mainland, certain high schoolers are known to call their Pine Island classmates "mulletheads," an insult dating back to The Three Stooges era alongside chowderhead and dunderhead. The term is nasty, nonetheless, proving that it's not always the word, but its delivery. I was once witness to two teens in a pickup yelling "Fucking mullethead" at a friend's daughter who was walking home from the bus stop. Jeannie spun and unleashed one of the most creative torrents of filth I've ever heard, and at such volume, to boot. She wasn't having any of it, not that day, and not ever, I hope.
"Eat More Mullet" was a saying coined by the late Pine Island artist Mel Meo. A roadside mural in her honor now shouts her motto, which has always felt more like a reprimand than a suggestion. I do my best. Smoked mullet spread on a cracker can be a separate level of heaven, and they still say Mel's dip couldn't be beat. She collected all the best old Southern ladies' recipes and managed to improve on them. Horseradish was a not-so-secret ingredient, but the rest?
Tucked back amongst the mango trees and stacks of crab traps in her old yard, a hand-painted sign, "MEL'S MULLET, Famous Fritters & Key Lime Pie," hangs from a Sabal palm. I'm there visiting my friend Steve, a commercial fisherman and Mel's former husband. Experts matter, and I'm hoping to get his opinion on the upcoming Mullet Toss, which I'm thinking of attending again after a fifteen-year absence, but I'm shy bringing up the event, for reasons I'll get to. So, I asked my favorite expert about mullet.
"You ain't gonna' die, eating mangoes and mullet," Steve reminisces as we sit on the stairs to his stilt house. He speaks slowly, deliberately. "That was another saying of Mel's. 'Mangoes and mullet.' She liked to paint the two of them together."
"'Eat More Mullet,'" I quote. "That mural's a part of everybody's lives now."
"You could do worse. Good for your skin. Your heart. High in Omega-3."
Not one to be bothered with a shirt too often, my friend's weathered skin resembles a deflated football. As for his heart, Steve can be bristly, but I'd never underestimate his heart. He squints at the horizon and lowers his voice.
"The schools of fish in the Bible? Probably mullet. I believe. Find them everywhere in the world."
Then louder, "Your biggest buyer's probably Georgia if you're selling outside of the state. Next to them, Canadians buy a massive amount. But right here you can't get a mullet sandwich on an island that used to be based on commercial fishing. Twenty-dollar grouper sandwich is easy to find. You can get pizza, you can get a taco. Can't get a good fish sandwich. What's convenient about that? Used to be a barter system. When you lived by the water and didn't have a lot of money, you ate a lot of fish. But mullet was good trade. People from Georgia and Central and North Florida? Look, they understand how to eat fish. That's how far you got to go for a decent sandwich. But back then, maybe they had some chickens."
A hairy mosquito lands on Steve's neck, reconsiders everything, and flies off before I can say a word.
"I was a kid in the '60s when the price dropped so low the state tried changing the name to 'lisa,' a Spanish word for mullet, thinking that might sell fish. They even sent out lisa recipes in the mail. Lisa Luxury Loaf. Nobody was looking to eat lisa."
"Ha. How do you cook yours?"
Steve shrugs. "Smoked, fried, sauteed, poached, microwaved. Doesn't matter. They're delicious. Flavor comes down to when and where you catch them. They're skinnier and beat up after they spawn, from Christmas till March. You can still eat them. Just not as good. Or if the water's brackish, it's polluted with fertilizer. Clean water, clean mullet. What they like to eat is the mud that floats up when the grasses decay. You'll see those mats of floating… yuck. They call it 'gopher guts.' The fish will school up and eat that off the surface."
Speaking of muck, we're getting deep, and I finally ask, "What do you think about the Mullet Toss?"
Steve's whole demeanor changes. "Throwing food? Not how I was raised. Throw a ball. Think of all the balls out there not getting thrown right now, but people want to get together and throw fish. No."
Fifteen years ago, my choice to throw food at the Pine Island Mullet Toss was uninformed. I was a newbie with five bucks to spare. Everyone milled around the parking lot of The Olde Fish House in Matlacha, a waterfront landmark lost to Hurricane Ian in '22. (Today, the building's only sign says, "Eat," which begs for the graffiti— "More Mullet.")
Mine was the third name called. I hadn't even had time to consider every possible throwing technique. A seven-year-old girl with wild, frizzy hair approached, holding out a three-pound striped mullet she'd rolled in sand so I might get a better grip.
"Here," she said. "Good luck!" She was so excited, so sincere.
"Thank you. Throw it down that way, huh?" I said, pointing.
She nodded. "Stay inside the lines."
"What about them?" I aimed my chin at an elderly couple who were setting up their fancy, sun-roofed, two-person chair about twenty yards down, right on top of the left boundary line. No one else stood within screaming distance of the landing zone, but these late arrivals were challenging all comers.
"Good luck," she repeated, but her tone fell, sounding more like, "You'll need it."
At the Pensacola Interstate Mullet Toss, the "Flora-Bama," contestants stand in a ten-foot circle on a Florida beach and hurl wet mullet across state lines onto Alabama sand. It's a party. Twenty bucks buys one dead fish and goes straight to local charities, which often focus on addiction. Plus, there are swimsuits.
It was chilly that day in the parking lot of the Olde Fish House. I'd had to find socks.
Several kids had shaved sections of their long hair so they could rock a mullet while tossing a mullet. They wailed on air guitar. That degree of bravery inspired everyone, urging me to get this right, this one time. An actual chill ran down my spine. I was ready to toss my mullet.
I squeezed the tail and pictured whipping it overhand like a boomerang. My fish had already been thrown twice, bounced off the pavement and been retrieved by the kids, who used the same fish until it fell apart, apparently. Mine felt loose. I'll again call attention to the charities that might have stood to gain from my participation.
Twenty yards away, the retirees sat back. I was set to hurl a sizable fish down the dimensions of a bowling alley, but they were lounging in my gutter. (New rules address this design flaw, the official landing zone now more of a cone.) AARP VIPs were crowding me, but the adrenaline was so real. Over their heads, sixty yards downfield, lay the record for tossed mullet, and I had a goal.
I mean, of course, I hit them. That was never in doubt, was it? I knew their fate the moment they arrived. What shocked everyone, though, was how hard I whipped that fish, which beelined at someone's grandparents in a way that looked intentional and malicious. Gee whiz, my mullet sailed like a missile. They never stood a chance. It exploded on impact with the edge of that roof built into their fancy chair, bursting into mush, and raining down guts all over them.
"Oh!" the crowd gasped as two once-adorable seniors were covered in mullet scraps and entrails.
I was mortified, but something felt off. They looked happy. I had a suspicion I just helped these two fulfill some kink I wasn't in on. Not like I saw them rubbing the fish guts into each other's wrinkles or anything. I was covering my eyes by then, anyway. A lot of us were. It was difficult to watch a pair of old folks struggle out of their soggy chair and wipe themselves off, and my brain was overwrought, torturing me with instant replays.
Things got weird. I'd attended solo. I didn't return to my group of friends and get laughed at, diffusing all that tension. Nothing of the sort. I stood there alone, the eyes of the crowd boring holes in me from all directions while I fidgeted. Did I mention my social anxiety? I should have. Even showing up had been a big deal for me.
I was no stranger to loneliness, either, and divorce had offered a crash course all its own. This was a lonely-in-a-crowd, out-of-body experience. No mullet ever felt so alone. Or maybe that's why they jump. To escape the walleyed judgment of the school, fish they may not even know. The problem is those stolen moments of airborne freedom are fleeting. They keep landing, surrounded by eyes. So, the anxious ones keep jumping. And jumping.
Lucky to have survived, my victims dragged their chair back a few yards from the line for all of five minutes, then began scooching forward again, closer with each new toss. Like it was all just some game. I stood frozen, trying to understand them, trying to let some time pass before sneaking away to my car, and when I did, trying not to run.
I never returned to the Pine Island Mullet Toss. I get the idea. I'm not against people trying new things. But I'm done. Steve's take shored up that decision. My parents didn't raise me to throw food, either. After my showing in 2010, I withdrew into my hole like a fiddler crab and never saw those old fish fans again, to my knowledge. I don't even recognize anyone from that distorted sea of faces in the crowd while I'm out running errands. But fifteen years later, I still dread the day the stranger approaches me at Winn Dixie with a gleam in their eye, while I'm busy sniffing blueberries.
"Mullet Toss!" they'll cry, pointing.
I'll check behind me, and if we're alone, maybe offer a subtle nod.
"Mullet Toss," I'll whisper back, copping to it all, wishing I could jump.
