The Mullet Toss, explained for the people who don't believe us
Every spring there’s a moment in the conversation with a first-time visitor where we have to explain the Mullet Toss. They think we’re making it up. They’re not the first.
So, for the record:
The Mullet Toss is real. The third weekend of April, every year (give or take), at the Flora-Bama. It has been happening since 1985. Tens of thousands of people show up. The bar puts up the entry money. People throw a frozen mullet across the Florida-Alabama state line for distance. The longest throws win prizes. Other people watch from the dunes with Bushwackers. That is the event.
A few clarifying points, because this comes up every year:
Mullet is a fish. Specifically the striped mullet, a baitfish-grade species common in Gulf and bay waters. Not a hairstyle. Not a euphemism. An actual mullet, frozen, the size of a small football.
The mullet is dead. The Bama is not catching live mullet and chucking them. They’re cleaned, weighed, and frozen, all the same general size. After the throw they’re collected and used again. No mullet is harmed in the making of the Mullet Toss in any meaningful sense.
You throw it from a sand circle on the Florida side, across the line, into Alabama. The literal state line runs along the beach behind the Bama. The throwing area is in Florida. The landing zone is in Alabama. The longest throws clear well past 150 feet.
Anyone can enter. Registration fee, you stand in line, you get three throws. Categories by age and gender. Kids’ division. The pros are obvious — they have a technique that involves a particular grip, a few-step run-up, and the kind of muscle memory that says they’ve been doing this every April for a decade.
The crowd is the event. The throwing is the photo opportunity. The being-there is the actual thing. Multi-day. Live music on every Bama stage. Bushwackers in plastic cups. People in flag-themed swimwear. Bikers, retirees, college kids, locals, a few dogs. The energy is somewhere between Mardi Gras and a small county fair and a music festival, with mullet involved.
It is the biggest weekend of the year on this stretch of the coast. All the condos book up. The traffic on Perdido Key Drive is the worst of the year. If you’re trying to visit and you don’t want this scene, do not pick this weekend. If you’re trying to visit and you do want this scene, book six months ahead.
Why? Because in 1984 some people at the Bama had an idea and the next year they tried it and it stuck and forty-plus years later it is the most-photographed thing this region produces. There is no deeper explanation. The Gulf Coast has a long history of taking a goofy idea and committing to it for decades. The Mullet Toss is the platonic ideal of the form.
The merch. Every year has its own commemorative shirt. The shirts have become collectible. The Bama gift shop sells out fast. If you see somebody walking around the Key in a faded Mullet Toss ‘03 shirt, that person is a regular.
Is it weird? Yes. Affectionately. The kind of weird that a place earns by being itself for a long time without apology. We recommend it.
— Kathy