Martin Bowler’s Adventures How Martin banked the year’s biggest bream
With a near ‘15’ my bream personal best, I was determined to make it bigger...
THE previous night had been cold, and as the full moon rose I suspected the chill would return.
I’d have preferred cloud cover and milder temperatures, but what really mattered was that I’d found my quarry. Those liners at dusk
could have been from any species, but humped backs momentarily porpoising followed by forked tails gave the game away.
I had finally decided that this year I would set about catching a big bream. So, as the sun dipped below the horizon, you can understand my excitement – especially when the bobbin slowly lifted and dropped back.
Somewhere out there, between me and my bait, was a shoal of fish truly deserving the nickname ‘dustbin lid’. Thrilling stuff, so you might well wonder why I’d ignored bream for so long…
THIRD NIGHT BEST!
I blame Terry Lampard, because when I sought advice from the maestro he told me that night three on a bream trip was the best and that patience was the key. Now, Lamps loved life in the bivvy and could easily stay put for a week, but I’m far too excitable for that. From the glint in his eye, Terry knew that only too well!
For a couple of seasons I did fish Kingsmead, but try as I might I couldn’t break the 15lb barrier and had to make do with a fish of 14lb 15oz! I also had carp to keep boredom at bay. They regularly stole hook-baits not meant for them, and I didn’t mind at all.
This time round, though, I needed to keep my focus and avoid other angling challenges. Maybe I could prove to old Lamps, doubtless looking down on me, that I was a bream angler after all.
SECRET WEAPON
I had set up where the water transitioned from shallow to deep. This shelf, I guessed, was part of the bream highway, a road with a firm gravel substrate and no weed to interrupt their travels after dark. Bream, being social creatures, like to travel in convoy and here at 60 yards range I hoped I had created a service station! After finding what I felt was the correct spot with my marker rod I peppered it with a
Spomb, introducing 30 payloads of pellets, 12mm Krill boilies, Krill Cluster and mixed particles – all copiously doused in oil. I was deliberately not so accurate with the final 10 casts, ensuring a spread of bait and plenty of room for the shoal to feed.
I wanted to cast accurately but still enjoy the fight, so three Drennan 2¼lb test curve rods were perfect. Reels carried 15lb E-S-P Syncro XT to cope with the heavy 70g E-S-P Method feeders I’d be casting out. My secret weapon lay in the mix I would load on to the frame. If the bream behaved true to form I wouldn’t get a bite until past midnight, so something needed to be left to attract them.
My 50/50 blend of Sticky Krill Active and halibut powder meant that if necessary I could leave the feeders out all night and still have a lump of groundbait in situ.
Potent on its own, I boosted it further with a sprinkling of micro pellets and a good glug of oil. I wouldn’t at this point add larger food items – these would be first into the feeder mould, before the groundbait on top was compressed. I didn’t think it mattered what hookbait I used – hopefully it would just be sucked in – but I opted for small dumbells on 4ins hooklengths made from size 10 Cryogen Curve Shanx and 15lb braid.
When the line bites began it was clear there’d be no better chance of catching a big bream all season.
The cold drove me into my sleeping bag early, but I carried on watching the water until 11pm, when I fell asleep – not before I’d seen rolling fish moving towards me down the gravel strip!
A series of bleeps rather than a single shrill awakened me at 12.30am. A I struggled to find my glasses a huge bronze flank twisted and turned, trying to rectify the mistake it had made in sucking on the Method feeder. But the barbed hook had done its job.
As I lifted the rod a series of thumps told me all I needed to know. Under the pressure I applied the fish kited left, so rapidly that I had to follow it into the next swim.
With it directly in front of me again I gained line rapidly, but I was still concerned – a bream has limited strength but it can shed the hook easily, using its deep body to flap free. With each wallow my anxiety level rose still further.
As the bream slipped across the surface and into the net I could see it was big, but had I found a 15-pounder? I couldn’t be sure as it lay in the mesh and, strangely, I still had no inkling of the magnitude of what I had caught when I lifted it on to the mat.
All that changed when I knelt down to remove the hook by torchlight. It was huge, not particularly in the flanks, but with a prizefighter’s chest and shoulders. Its massive humped back reminded me of a carp.
The scales pulled round to 18lb 5oz and I was in shock – I’d leapfrogged from ‘big’ straight to ‘giant’ in the bream stakes. I could never have imagined a fish of such proportions, yet there it was in front of me. I needed to calm down and take a picture, but that would have to wait as another rod was calling me.
The giant was put back in the landing net while I played another bream towards it. By comparison it seemed small, but it went 15lb 4oz. Twice that night I had exceeded my target – perhaps now Lamps would allow me to call myself a bream angler!