HOW HEAVY BAITING CAN BRING BIG REWARDS
Be creative with your mix to improve your chances of a specimen bream
IF YOU have set your sights on catching a specimen bream, the next few weeks offer you the best chances of success.
These can be the easiest or the most frustrating fish to catch, depending on how easy it is for them to get enough to eat. On rich pits with very low stocks they can be impossible to wean off natural food, whereas on more prolific venues they will gobble up any food put in their path.
BULK BAITING
Think carefully about your swim choice and don’t consider baiting up until you are sure that the fish are visiting the area regularly – either because you are seeing rolling fish, getting line bites or, best of all, catching a few.
Once I am confident that I am fishing the right swims it’s time to think about increasing the amount of feed to encourage the bream to feed harder. There is no need to bait heavily, though. As a starting point for an overnight session I will use one kilo of groundbait loaded with sweetcorn, mini boilies and, especially, pellets.
MY GROUNDBAIT MIX
The base of my bream groundbaits will be cheap ingredients. The mix should hold particles and bind well so that it can be balled-up and fed at range. Brown crumb is a good starting point. Buy in bulk to keep the price down. Another useful binding ingredient is Layers Mash – a gritty feed for chickens. This makes groundbaits really heavy. Another addition for all my bream groundbaits is liquid molasses.
My bulk groundbait mix works great on its own, and is very cheap, but it is definitely improved by adding some fishmeal groundbait – around 30 per cent of any fishmeal-based Method groundbait will pay dividends.
There are loads of other additives that you can add, from the classic sweet Brasem additive, to Green Lipped Mussel powder. All these will bump up the cost substantially, though, and I think they are better used just to boost the attraction around the hookbaits. I do this by using a Method feeder or small PVA sticks packed with my enriched groundbait mix.
ADD SOME FOOD
My groundbait is mainly used as a carrier for as many goodies as I can pack into it, so it needs to bind well. Pellets are always first into the mix. Don’t go too large – 6mm halibuts are about right. Next I add sweetcorn and follow this up
with a couple of handfuls of boilie flake. Dead maggots and casters, leftovers from winter sessions and stored in the freezer, can also be added.
Why add so many different baits? Each is there for a different reason. Pellets are by far the best bream attractor, but not ideal as a hookbait, especially if you are fishing overnight. Sweetcorn is very visible and a good hookbait choice, while boilies often single out the larger bream and will last all night long on the hair.
If I had access to a large supply of worms, particularly lobworms, then these would be an excellent addition to my bream menu, but unless I am fishing a venue where the bream are exceptionally picky and refuse to eat corn or boilies, I will leave the worms out.
ON THE HAIR
Most of my bream fishing is at night – in fact I can think of only a handful from more than 100 double-figure fish that have come during daylight.
Unless you are a real night-owl, this will mean leaving the rigs out for extended periods of time with bite-alarms installed. To some extent, this style of fishing must influence the hookbaits that I use, as I need to have confidence that they have not broken down or been picked off by small fish.
Sweetcorn is a very effective bream hookbait. Two or three grains on the hair make a decent mouthful for a big slab. The only downside is that on a long cast it can be smashed off the hair on impact with the water.
To overcome this, try combining two pieces of real corn with a piece of artificial bait furthest from the hook. The fake bait will also help to balance the weight of the hook.
On venues that are also carp fished, mini fishmeal boilies are a good choice, although they don’t need to have a savoury or fishy smell. Among my favourites are Scopex Squid boilies, the sweet aroma of which complements the fishmeals. Combining two 10mm boilies, or one boilie and a piece of fake corn, produces a barrelshaped hookbait, a winner for me.
It doesn’t have to be all about high-tech baits. Worms, maggots, punched meat and bread all work well. The most natural baits are often hard to beat on venues where the bream are really picky.