Winter Bream (seriously big)

[Steve D]

And, provided you avoid fishmeal based ones, the your Eel problems almost cease, I can say that, because the lake I fish is full of big eels and I have only caught a handful this season. 10mm Nash scopex squid and robin red. Catches some nice big Rudd as well

 

You really should stick with the hair rig, lord knows how many pickups you might be missing.

 

Den

 

I even hair rig, denja's, lobs, and sadly casters. Now I know a lot will say, REALLY, Casters? Trust, untill you try it, 5/6 casters on a very light hair rig can be a demon, especially this time of year. The lake I fish that has a head of eels, casters haven't been an issue unless you start feeding them heavily. On the other hand, if I put in a couple of pints of casters/ or maggots, it's eels non stop and it's strikes me eels on the hook spook the bream, big time. I even think if you have a number of them in the swim may be enough to spook off the big bream. No facts to base this on, just how it has been for me.

Steve

[poledark]

Sorry Steve, I see you said bolt rig, not hair rig. Perhaps I should have said "self hooking rig"

 

Den

[John Weddup]

thank you for the correction phone

 

i only wish to share the best in cooking with everyone as english food is so bad they could do with the assistance to make things better

 

i will need to reconsider what i post as they have not been understood very well and i think most peoples have had the dirty end of the stick and think i eat all the fishes i catch when i buy my fish maybe not the gudgeons but they get used as bait all the time it does get very confusing about what you can and cant do there is plenty of the multi sdtandards that seem to go but i am learning very well

 

its wrong to take home the eels or pikes that have swallowed the hooks not saying happens often but it is hard with the eels when yuou are not expecting to be catching them and so are damaged and might die and will make the water go bad if rotting in it but lots of anglers damage the fishs face and pull bits off by fishing with the wrong tackle and bash them on the ground with out mates and do very bad job at tacking the hooks out and do this to the same fish over and over and over and then some more overs until the fish has no head left and this is ok thing to do?

 

i enjoy reading about all the best anglers here but i think i may be upsetting the fragile minded ones or the ones that get the sexy feeling when they play with the carps

 

i will take more care to be understanding to the fragile ones and not to be upsetting them and so will not give good bream receipe i bet you thought there is no good bream receipe but there is and know you will never know what it is as will remain family sercet know

i like my time here but maybe i am radical and so not very good to understand and so might be better not to do the postings but will still like to read what other anglers put as that should be ok i think so that might be goodbye we see how i feel another day i feel a little sad now

 

take one bream size 1 to 2 kilo is best...................................

 

you will never know now

 

 

Hi Azrael

 

I come over a bit prickly sometimes and not all understand when I am joking or am even being sarcastic starting odd posts that are designed to take the pee out of other posts.

 

I appreciate your honesty and sense of humour and you certainly have not upset me.

 

Being a thick old country boy could you let me in on the secret of what country you are from?.

 

best regards

 

John

 

ps I am a country boy and have and still do eat many things that i kill.

Edited February 11, 2012 by John Weddup

[Steve Burke]

The size of both tench and bream has grown out of all proportions to other species> this is largely due to the quantities of high-protein food going into the venues, generally by the carp boys........

 

Steve

 

Very interested in a winter ticket at wingham. Interesting, the guys on lea valley have offered me a winter ticket.

 

Now that's the first thing you've said I actually disagree with!

 

I believe there are lots of reasons that bream and tench have grown bigger, but not that the main one is high protein bait, although it certainly does make a difference. For instance, very little high protein bait has yet gone into Wingham, and almost none in the early years. Yet despite this it produces very fast-growing tench and bream. Some of these tench came from a water that produced doubles but has barely been fished at all, let alone with HP baits.

 

If you look at the species where the record has gone up most in percentage terms (carp, barbel, bream and tench), the one common factor is that they are (or perhaps more accurately used to be) more summer than winter fish. Those members of the carp family that traditionally feed all year round such as chub, dace and roach haven't increased in weight as much. With climate change we have warmer winters on average and so a longer growing season. This I feel is the most important factor, but my no means the only one.

 

As for a Wingham winter ticket please do e-mail me via the Wingham web site.

[John Weddup]

I think we can safely say the definate one common thing we all agree with is the best way to catch big bream is to locate them.

 

This I personally think is harder to do than locating big carp. Carp can be fairly pedictable in their feeding routes as can tench but bream seem to have a mind of their own.

 

In river systems individual bream have been tagged and have moved several miles in just a few days. On big waters they do the same.

 

Ok with shoal fish if you are lucky to have a water where they show themselves by rolling you have a huge advantage but thats only if you want to catch a bag of fish. For our bigger bream we know they are either very lonely or in small shoals of a few fish.

 

What I sometimes find difficult to understand is that there are traditional area's of river systems that the bream seem to feed in without any real reason as regards depth bottom make up etc but these hot spots seem to last for decades.

 

Steve D mentioned that he finds fish near their spawning grounds but on some big waters they have several different spawning grounds and use different ones in different years. I suppose given time a reason could be found why the change from year to year.

 

I think we all also know that fishing for big bream is a waiting game foregoing catching lots of fish to get the bigger prize.

 

To this end this is why we use plastic baits, boilies, hair rigging, PVA stockiongs etc to avoid smaller fish and ensure our bait is presented tangle free and clear of debris in our target area.

 

I really do believe that any of us writing here already know how to catch big bream (seriously big) we just need to decide we want to commit the time too it and fish the right venue's.

 

And yes as soon as it thaws we would need to be at it just like steve d says. I have spoken to a few carp anglers in the last couple of weeks and when they have been able to fish they have still picked up bream in the middle of the night.

 

I hope this all makes sense as I have spent the day thrashing brambles indulging in a chainsaw massacre and having a pyromaniac 8 hours.

 

Should be plenty of room for my bivvy there in the spring.

 

regards

 

John

[Steve Burke]

Without asking for any "state secrets" to be disclosed, are there many actually fishing thro the winter for bream/carp on the coarse lake Steve?

 

Some of the big bream (12/13lbs) get caught in the depths of winter on some of the MKF waters, so I can see no reason why not at Wingham. There are only a handful of decent sized doubles in the MKF waters so the stock numbers are probably comparable............indeed, Wingham may have more

 

Just being curious

 

Not yet, Den, but that's likely to change to some extent this year. In fact more or less nobody has ever fished deliberately for the bream in winter.

[Steve Burke]

And, provided you avoid fishmeal based ones, the your Eel problems almost cease, I can say that, because the lake I fish is full of big eels and I have only caught a handful this season. 10mm Nash scopex squid and robin red. Catches some nice big Rudd as well

 

Thanks for that, Den. However I've been using fishmeal boilies for the bream and tench at Wingham for the last couple of years and not yet had a single eel. Sure, they've been fruit flavoured, but on a fishmeal base.

 

It may of course be because many of the big eels have migrated. I'll be trying lobworms this year to find out.

[John Weddup]

Now that's the first thing you've said I actually disagree with!

 

I believe there are lots of reasons that bream and tench have grown bigger, but not that the main one is high protein bait, although it certainly does make a difference. For instance, very little high protein bait has yet gone into Wingham, and almost none in the early years. Yet despite this it produces very fast-growing tench and bream. Some of these tench came from a water that produced doubles but has barely been fished at all, let alone with HP baits.

 

 

Yes think there are different strains of fish aswell as very nutricious waters but looking at Steve d,s big bream water that he has been fishing there are huge bream there but very few anglers so not loads of high protien bait going in there either.

 

I visit various carp forums and one recently had a discussion about bream with several photo's of double figure fish. Several look really old black or war marked but a few espescially a 15lb fish in one pic looked a beautifull golden speciman.

 

I suppose the only reason I visit the carp forums is like steve d says they catch quite a few so its worth looking at tactics bait and tackle.

 

John

[Dick Dastardly]

We apear to just be repeating the same things as in the "Big Bream" thread.

[Steve D]

Initially I didnt want to say there is more than one strain of common Bream, for sounding stupid. Now apart from actually catching what can onlt be described as an 'albenio' bream of around 8lb, in my mind it goes further. I have fished endlessly for fifteen years in search of big bream, and as such have fished many waters. One thing I have found is there is more than one type of water and similarly more than one type of common bream.

For sure, not all the fish that have grown big have done this on the back of high protein, although as said, it has had an influance of some venues. As JW said, my main venue for the last how ever many years has a rediculous amount of big fish in comparison to smaller fish, all-be-it very few fish per acre. Now this place rarely see's more than a couple of hardy souls, and even less bait. So clearly the fish have got big due the the water. Interestingly there apperas to be a lot of waters like this along the ouse valley.

 

So to my theory, two types of bream. My group of friends and I call them flat bream or belly bream. Flat bream have no belly or seemingly little capacity to grow a belly, they are big framed, long, big shoulders etc, but no belly. These fish rarely go over 10lb. (John W, like the ardleigh fish). Then there are the ones with the big belly's. What I have found it that one water will hold one type and another water the other. I have yet to find both types on one venue. Now there will be a lot on conjecture over this, and for the sake of sounding daft, it's just me and a few friends who believe there are two strains. I have had flat belly fish that if they had a belly would weigh 15lb or more. By contrast I've had fish that are 4/5 inches shorter than a flat 10 and weaighed 2/3lb more.

 

This I do know, when I am searching the net for pix of big bream looking for a new venue, the first thing I look at is the shape of the fish in the photo's. Andero, as I suggested about the fish at the new lake we talked about...

 

Steve