Bream at night

[Dick Dastardly]

Now I really am puzzled Steve! You said in an earlier post that you had to keep getting out of the bivvy to reset the bobbins after getting liners. I assume this was pulling them back down? Or is the lead moving as well? If so, then I would increase the weight of the lead (unless you want it to move?)

 

Budgie, if you give a fish 6" of "slack" then the line will slip off after it tightens. If you give them 24" it will slip off after it tightens. Why give them 24" (or more) ? Surely all you need to know is if it is a liner, and if it drops back after lifting, then you have your answer.

 

If you are fishing in such a way that you need to actually strike to set the hook, then I can see no answer to your percieved problems, certainly not at night

Den

 

 

Definately no need to apologise mate! Thats the whole point Den I dont have a problem with long drops on my bobbins! Im trying to justify them! And also give reasons why I dont think short drops (or no drops as Brian mentioned) are any good unless using slf hooking rigs!

 

Also I dont want to know if its a liner at or after 24" as thats when I expect either the drop back to happen genoting a liner or it to carry on and churn the reel/take line thus denoting a run and me striking! Its when people say I can do the same at 6" I dont understand as surely at this stage it could be either.Or as I aked Brian is it that you think the sooner the resistance comes in the sooner the line bite will "stop" and the churning/baitrunner going prick thje fish and it doing so confirm a proper bite?

 

Started as a result of the knocking of long drop bobbins (all though I think some do go a bit OTT on the length!) the 24" I gave as an example is about what I use at the shortest and 30" at longest and indeed the length of travel I base to set my Swinghams on when using them in windy conditions.

Edited April 5, 2011 by BUDGIE

[Dick Dastardly]

After re reading your post again I was just going to say some thing else! But I see you have edited it.Please allow me to quote and comment on the original-

 

"Budgie, if you give a fish 6" of "slack" then the line will slip off after it tightens."

 

NO I don't think it will in the same way that a classic liner on a long drop light indicator.The classic liner ie the slow steady rise and slow steady fall has allways been thought to be the line climbing up over the breams back and then slowly sliding down the other side of the hump.According to Stone,Walker,Taylor.Drennan,Guttfield etc any way. I will be quite honest and say all though I have allways accepted this I have often thought it sounded flawed due to one thing.....what happens once the line has slipped down over the back surely it would then stay trapped by the tail? You would then logically expect a liner to be slow up,slow down and a sharp jerk up (this most likely being where any spooking would happen)! Therefore my "NO" is based on tradition!

 

But regardless of these doubts Ive followed the traditional thinking and its allways worked regardless of if the old ones are right or not!

So if we accept the classic liner theories then the 6" movement would be a totally different indication on the bobbin as the line would still be climbing up the back? more like still just past the head on a LSD bream!

 

What do you reckon?

 

Do you also think/agree that the liners we call "classic" are the fish snagging the mainline on the rod tip side of the lead and not the hook length? I say this as I cant see how they would snag modern short (as opposed to the traditional 3' hook length) hook links?

Edited April 5, 2011 by BUDGIE

[Dick Dastardly]

Just to add another spanner into the works Ive often felt that the "classic liner" is more likely caused not by the line going over the fish's back but in fact by the bream getting its nose underneath the main line when up ended (feeding) and the "up" part of the indication being the bream righting itself the line being pulled up and dragged up its "face".The slow down indication as the line slides not up and then over its back but simply sliding back down of its face and back to the bottom,At any distance with a light bottom just the line dropping back down would be slow and not a fast drop back like you get with a heavy carp style one on a tight line.

 

Once again thoughts please?

[Dick Dastardly]

If so, then I would increase the weight of the lead Den

 

Indeed something I am doing on my running rigs this year Den to avoid the lead being moved (all though as I mentioned before I only get this very ocaissionally) and rather than hinder my hopefully free running rig it should make it more so.

 

On my "hard bait" semi fixed lead rigs I'm going to stick with 1 1/2 oz in line flat pears as there is no problem here.

[lutra]

No of course not.

 

The only bait I have ever attempted to put in over breams heads are loose fed maggots or casters. Maybe my one and only trip (mid 70's) to Castle Waters gave me the wrong impression but the difference between "building up a swim" (where I would be feeding little and often to both draw fish in and encourage competitive feeding) and filling in a bream swim is that for the bream I would be expecting the fish to be in a large shoal and move over the bait at the same time, My main aim being to have enough feed out there to hold them for long enough to catch some before they ate it all and moved on.Simply because I cant pile in more on top of them (I did do this once with corn and got away with it resulting in a big catch of large 8-10lb fish but that's a different story) Well that's how all the other large shoal big bream at a variety of waters Ive fished have behaved anyway.

 

And none of it is really the same as fishing for smaller groups of very big bream as the "shoal" (probably a half dozen to 10 or so at most) of big bream is considerably smaller than a shoal (several hundred) large bream) so less feed/smaller baited area is required.

 

Seems I was just trying to fit your reply to the facts Brian so I will ask once again in the simplest way I can think of putting it- If a line bite is (for example)24" up and 24" down and a proper bite is (for example for ever!) how can I tell the difference after (for example) 12"? (This assumes a "short drop" is 12 " and a "long drop" is 24"+)

 

Incidentally when I fished Castle the fish averaged around 4lbs and 300lb nets were common so one has to assume (as I did from your catches there when the fish weighed more) that the shoals were allways big there.

For a picture of what Castle loch is like today, think of LSD Wingham with a guesstimated of 40 bream in 40 acres which equals 1 bream per acre. Now a lot of guessing and think of 200 acre Castle loch in the 70's with say 20-30 bream per acre which would come to 4-6000 bream. Lots of 200 fish shoals and good anglers on good days bagging 2-300lb bags.

 

Castle loch got netted in the early 80's, but they didn't get them all. I would guess they mist a 1000 bream and with time thats dwindled a bit more. So now we are looking at more like 4-5 bream per acre. Them bream didn't seem to spawn successfully, but took it on themselves to pig out on all the food they didn't have to share with lots of brothers and sisters.

 

So maybe only 4 or 5 times the number of bream per acre than a LSD water, but they are still very much shoal fish. The picture i get is maybe 10-20 shoals in summer, but at the right time of year maybe only 1 or two shoals and the chance of some very big bags.....

 

Anyway i don't think any of that (even the shoal fish bit) really has that much to do with this. Much as i agree competitively and confidently feeding shoal bream (like castle loch bream) are a lot easier to fish for and feed in a very different way to (at best) small groups of LSD bream, How they fight or how they react to being hooked with a 3" hook length to a bolt rig with some tension on the line isn't any different. Your proper takes become screamers. A screamer isn't something to be mistaken with even a two foot line bite. 60% of the time my spool and bites alarm set off like someone has picked up my rig and set off at a good walking pace. A couple of seconds and 5-10 yards of line later and just pick up the rod. 39% of the time you will get a small drop back before it screams off and the other 1% the bobbin just drops to the floor dead. There is no guessing to be done.

 

Its makes big breaming that bloody easy Budgie, it will have you oiling your centre pin and heading for a river.

[Dick Dastardly]

My trip was my last but one "school summer holiday" when I went there with a school friend and his grandfather,We had a great time bagging up on for what for us were good bream at 4lb,Thanks for the up date explains how why the water now produces bigger bream in relatively good numbers.

 

I'm totally sold that a bolt rig is the far more effective method of turning bites into landed fish,don't need any persuasion there and I see no point in using drops of any length with this method simply have the bobbin up top to show ant drop back (if the fish bolts towards you).

 

However I can only see it being practical to use bolt rigs with hard baits that I don't need to see every knock on to know they are still there. Small fish can soon strip worms,maggots,bread,corn etc and I don't want to sit there any longer than necessary without bait on or wind in/recast unnecessarily due to spooking.

 

Combined with the small fish and eel problem I am starting to feel that the bolt rig and hard bait (most likely plastic corn fished over real corn) will be my approach this season. Or boilie over crushed boillie/boillie crumb as you have shown confidence in this and a few have been caught on it now.

[Rob Ward]

My trip was my last but one "school summer holiday" when I went there with a school friend and his grandfather,We had a great time bagging up on for what for us were good bream at 4lb,Thanks for the up date explains how why the water now produces bigger bream in relatively good numbers.

 

I'm totally sold that a bolt rig is the far more effective method of turning bites into landed fish,don't need any persuasion there and I see no point in using drops of any length with this method simply have the bobbin up top to show ant drop back (if the fish bolts towards you).

 

However I can only see it being practical to use bolt rigs with hard baits that I don't need to see every knock on to know they are still there. Small fish can soon strip worms,maggots,bread,corn etc and I don't want to sit there any longer than necessary without bait on or wind in/recast unnecessarily due to spooking.

 

Combined with the small fish and eel problem I am starting to feel that the bolt rig and hard bait (most likely plastic corn fished over real corn) will be my approach this season. Or boilie over crushed boillie/boillie crumb as you have shown confidence in this and a few have been caught on it now.

 

So you're agreed that there's no need for long drops with bolt rigs and hard baits then?

[Andy Nellist]

I've read the whole of this thread and its been quite interesting (and at times a bit out of order)

 

It is certainly the case that how you feed, what you feed and where you place your hookbaits in respect to your feed and the bottom type can make a huge difference to your catches.

 

I tend to use a carpet such as crumb/corn/maggot and fish to specific points at which I concentrate the g/b I expected the Bream to eat first like chopped worm/caster

 

If using two rods I often fish one to the back right of the carpet and one to the near left. That way you can work out which direction the fish are approaching the bait and tailor you approach accordingly.

 

Big Bream are easy to spook and for that reason I like long drops even if using heavy indicators. Continuous resistance is not a problem with liners but a fish hitting hitting a tight line is.

 

If you know where the fish are and want to avoid liners using a sinking braid is effective.

 

As for hooklength well that depends on bait where you are fishing and how the fish are behaving. There is not single optimum hooklength for all situations. I've used everything from 2 inches to 7 feet and they all work on their day.

 

The secret to being a good angler for any species is to make the most of every opportunity and to do that you need an open and inquiring mind.

 

Oh and finally... Lutra you need to chill out

[Rob Ward]

I've read the whole of this thread and its been quite interesting (and at times a bit out of order)

 

It is certainly the case that how you feed, what you feed and where you place your hookbaits in respect to your feed and the bottom type can make a huge difference to your catches.

 

I tend to use a carpet such as crumb/corn/maggot and fish to specific points at which I concentrate the g/b I expected the Bream to eat first like chopped worm/caster

 

If using two rods I often fish one to the back right of the carpet and one to the near left. That way you can work out which direction the fish are approaching the bait and tailor you approach accordingly.

 

Big Bream are easy to spook and for that reason I like long drops even if using heavy indicators. Continuous resistance is not a problem with liners but a fish hitting hitting a tight line is.

 

If you know where the fish are and want to avoid liners using a sinking braid is effective.

 

As for hooklength well that depends on bait where you are fishing and how the fish are behaving. There is not single optimum hooklength for all situations. I've used everything from 2 inches to 7 feet and they all work on their day.

 

The secret to being a good angler for any species is to make the most of every opportunity and to do that you need an open and inquiring mind.

 

Oh and finally... Lutra you need to chill out

 

What length of drop do you use and is that determined by the type of rig you're using, Andy?

[Steve Burke]

Now I really am puzzled Steve! You said in an earlier post that you had to keep getting out of the bivvy to reset the bobbins after getting liners. I assume this was pulling them back down? Or is the lead moving as well? If so, then I would increase the weight of the lead (unless you want it to move?)

 

No, it's the other way round, I said that that without long drops I'd had to have kept getting out of the bivvy! That's one of the reasons I use them.