Big bream

[Dick Dastardly]

Fish shoal/group by size not age.A basic principle of the shoaling defence tactic.

[lutra]

Aha, the first tentative step towards an eel-free life!

 

And bream-free probably

 

I keep thinking, what if I'd kept the fake maggots on for that second night and caught the bream anyway - that would have been fantastic!

 

But for the tench, they certainly work. I think I'll continue to fish them in the day and switch to 'real' baits at night for the bream.

 

I feel pretty liberated now about hookbaits - I'm going to play around with a few options before my next trip and see if I can find a way to include a maggot ot two without it being too 'eely'.

There is a 15lb bream in the AT this week from a club water in Hampshire that is said to have been caught on "three fake rubber casters on a hair".

 

I had a look for a link to it but couldn't find one, but this one might interest you big breamers.

Edited June 4, 2009 by lutra

[Dick Dastardly]

Its just so difficult to draw any definate conclussions with all of this as there are so reletively few SB caught and from a variety of waters.

 

Yes bait A has caught a fish but is it the best? ie would more have been caught on another bait or would the fish still have been caught regardless? See what I mean.

 

Much why Ive decided to stick to what Im confident in.I dont think it most likely matters what the bait is in reality but confidence is very important.

[Dick Dastardly]

At the next WSG meeting Im as well as marking up the captures on the map going to list what baits we have takennSB on from the water.I bet no pattern will be shown! Im then going to try and cross reference this with baits used by all anglers be they targeting bream or not.

[Anderoo]

I'm convinced now that (at Wingham) hook baits are a red herring. Ditto rigs. (We should list all rigs they've been caught on too.)

 

It's to do with location for me. Luckily the Wingham bream do come in and feed very close, which makes things easier.

 

One thing I mentioned but hasn't been picked up was the really blinding info about undertow. In the day, the wind was coming down the lake, right to left, hitting some big gravel humps to my left, and making the water loop round towards me and then back to the right (against the wind) along the margin. It was very localised. It was also very obvious, both because of the willow seed on the water, and because I was float fishing for perch and was trotting against the wind!

 

The spot the bream came from was along the 'crease' (in river fishing terms), parallel with the bank. With the strength of the tow, there must have been loads of silt washed up along that line. The exact spot the fish came from was a tiny gravelly spot along that line.

 

That's what I mean about fishing close in - it's easy to find these areas at 15 yards, impossible at 100 yards.

 

Even though I wasn't fishing for bream, that session has given me more information than the previous 3 seasons.

 

Brings me back to the difference between fishing for tench and bream again. Now I've digested it all, it's clear to me that there is a difference. If I'd known then what I know now, I'd have laid out a banquet along that crease and put 4 baits all in a line, 5 yards apart. There's no way I'd do that for tench.

 

This is the first time I've been able to properly tie undertow to location, after all the theorising. I reckon it's worth spending all day if necessary with an unbaited float rod, finding these creases.

 

This means that even baiting is less important, if you want a single fish. If you're exactly in the right place, you can catch over virtually no feed (this has happened a few times, I'm not extrapolating from this last fish). But if you want to catch more than one, I think you have to think about it much more carefully.

 

PS thanks for the link Lutra - what a belter!

[Anderoo]

PS it makes more sense if they shoal by size rather than age, as the multiple catch last year comprised of two 12lbers and a 15lber, almost certainly from the same ('large') group.

 

Trying to catch more than one has to be one of the most vital things to try to suss out. God only knows how big some of the fish were that passed right in front of me last week...

[lutra]

PS it makes more sense if they shoal by size rather than age, as the multiple catch last year comprised of two 12lbers and a 15lber, almost certainly from the same ('large') group.

 

Trying to catch more than one has to be one of the most vital things to try to suss out. God only knows how big some of the fish were that passed right in front of me last week...

Last years multiple catch was caught in deep water late in the season wasn't it?

[Rob Ward]

Brings me back to the difference between fishing for tench and bream again. Now I've digested it all, it's clear to me that there is a difference. If I'd known then what I know now, I'd have laid out a banquet along that crease and put 4 baits all in a line, 5 yards apart. There's no way I'd do that for tench.

 

This is the first time I've been able to properly tie undertow to location, after all the theorising. I reckon it's worth spending all day if necessary with an unbaited float rod, finding these creases.

 

Is that not purely down to location though rather than the difference between fishing for the two species? I'll bet you'd have still caught Tench had you done that.

[Anderoo]

Lutra - yes, hence 'large' group. You're right though, it could have been all of them! I think that's what you're getting at.

 

Rob - maybe, but in that spot I only had one run from a tench, which I missed (oddly). The areas which consistently produce tench for me are tight to the biggest feature in front of me, however far out. The spot that produced the bream was in the middle of nowhere, feature-wise. It is down to location mainly, yes, but that's where I see the main difference. Tackle, baits and rigs are the same; amount of groundbait and area of groundbait are different, and where you fish in the swim can be very different (it depends on the swim of course.)

 

Subtle differences, but important, in my opinion.

 

As I said before, I don't think you need much groundbait at all if you want to pick up a single fish, as long as you're in exactly the right spot (hence my fluke). But I don't want to fluke one, I want to catch two or three if possible, because that may well be it for another year, and the more you catch the better chance you have of picking up one of the really big ones...

 

I'm not claiming authority on anything, this is just how I see it (today ).

[lutra]

Lutra - yes, hence 'large' group. You're right though, it could have been all of them! I think that's what you're getting at.

 

Rob - maybe, but in that spot I only had one run from a tench, which I missed (oddly). The areas which consistently produce tench for me are tight to the biggest feature in front of me, however far out. The spot that produced the bream was in the middle of nowhere, feature-wise. It is down to location mainly, yes, but that's where I see the main difference. Tackle, baits and rigs are the same; amount of groundbait and area of groundbait are different, and where you fish in the swim can be very different (it depends on the swim of course.)

 

Subtle differences, but important, in my opinion.

 

As I said before, I don't think you need much groundbait at all if you want to pick up a single fish, as long as you're in exactly the right spot (hence my fluke). But I don't want to fluke one, I want to catch two or three if possible, because that may well be it for another year, and the more you catch the better chance you have of picking up one of the really big ones...

 

I'm not claiming authority on anything, this is just how I see it (today ).

It is pretty much what i was getting at as Ive found that can be the only time when you can find different sizes together. Through the warm months on all the waters Ive fished the bream seem to spread far and wide in smaller groups of more uniform size. This may mean the line bites you got last week were off other smaller bream and not the biggies, but i may be wrong.