FISH NOTES 



GREY MULLET 



r I ""HE Grey Mullet (Mugil capita) claims first notice 

 * in my fish section, because my earliest recorded 

 observation was on this species ; besides this, the 

 fish has always been a favourite with me since the 

 day I first saw it jumping about Breydon. In 

 the earlier half of the last century it was a common 

 and annual visitor to Breydon, shoals coming up 

 in the summer-time; and in the deeper water that 

 then obtained (some of the flats being scarcely ever 

 dry) it revelled among the vegetation growing there, 

 the species known locally as "sea cabbage" (Ulva 

 lactuca), together with the molluscs living upon it, 

 being eaten by this fish. From the time when the 

 " Dickey Works " a kind of breakwater to the 

 ebbs coming from the Waveney and Wensum 

 (Yare) were constructed (just prior to the 'sixties), 

 the flats commenced to silt up, while the channel 



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