Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Herding ‘cattle’ on the Trent – Mark Perkins
What river bream lack in fighting prowess is outweighed in the numbers you can catch them. Dynamite Baits’ Mark Perkins is your guide to banking aquatic ‘cows’
BIG, browsing, idle, slow-moving, stately and long-lived, bream are a steadfast match winner on all waters. Although ‘steadfast’ is perhaps not quite the right word. Moving as they do in large shoals, bream will only be found in the areas where they actually want to be. So, for the angler looking to target them, what they lack in fight and vigour, they more than make up for in their remoteness. When it comes to my beloved River Trent, a waterway which I grew up fishing, they still remain the statesmen of the river. But even though I know the Trent like the back of my hand, that doesn’t mean I always know where they are going to be found on any given day. The Trent’s silver fish population has suffered a chequered past. In the 1970s, due to many factors, a great deal of the waterway’s silvers were consigned to the missing list. Fortunately, the bream shoals seemed to rise above what was happening to the shoals of roach and dace, and thrived. The only difference these days is whereas a 4lb fish was a ‘good un’ in the 1970s and a six-pounder a monster, a 6lb fish is now the norm. Many of the slabs now even weigh up to double figures.
Nomads of the river
Bream can be like ghosts at times, able to disappear on a whim. To illustrate this, in a recent survey, a shoal of bream was tagged so their movements could be monitored. Starting at the weir at Gunthorpe, over the course of the day they travelled to the weir at Stoke Bardolph, which must be a good mile or two, before turning around and coming back to Gunthorpe again. The reason for this is that bream are like aquatic cows, constantly on the move, looking for food to graze on. But, they do have areas that they prefer. These are often bends, where the river is slower and deeper which enables them to retreat from the flow and away from any other disturbances such as boats and predators. Where I am today, on Nottingham Piscatorial Society’s Rolleston stretch there are a number of bends as well as a riverbed that resembles an egg box. In front of me it is 20ft-25ft deep, yet move a few swims upstream and it’s 10ft. Areas like this are perfect for bream because any natural food washed downstream, collects in these deep holes.
River bream tackle
My rod would look more at home on a beach since it is a very powerful Shimano Beast Master DX 14ft Long Cast 150g feeder that’s almost capable of casting a 6lb bream let alone hooking one! So why do I use such a powerful rod? Firstly, I use large feeders to put down plenty of bait. Secondly, the length is required to get the fish up in the water and away from the large rocks and boulders that litter the bottom as well as making it easier to cast the long hooklinks I fish with. To improve bite indication, my reel is filled with 0.10mm braid. The fish might be big but they can still give the most delicate of bites. Braid has zero stretch so every little tap is registered on the rod tip. The low diameter also cuts through the water better, so in very deep water I don’t need to fish really heavy feeders or put a huge bow in the line to hold bottom. As I’m using braid, I have 25ft of 8lb Shimano
“I use my ‘dustbin’ feeder to feed half a pint for each of three casts at the start”
Technium mono as a shock leader. This is for the stretch value and has better abrasionresistance over sharp rocks than the thin braid. The feeder is a 45g open ended version, set free-running, with a Drennan Grippa Stop above to turn it into a bolt rig, together with a quick-change bead below. Hooklinks are very traditional, being anything from 3ft to 10ft. Today, I’m using one of 5ft. This is 0.18mm (5lb 5oz) of Aspire Fluorocarbon, a line I like because its stiffness helps to prevent tangles. The hook is a size 12 Drennan Super Specialist for hair-rigging or size 10 Wide Gape for side hooking.
Groundbait for all conditions
When it comes to fishing for bream, the buzzword tends to be groundbait. These large, stately fish love to graze over a bed of groundbait but I have a way of tailoring my mix for any given day or conditions. Firstly, I empty a bag of Dynamite Baits’ Marine Halibut and Silver-X Bream Original into a bucket and stir them together to create a base mix. This will last me a couple of sessions at least. The Bream Original is a sweet fluffy mix that perfectly complements the heavy, sticky and fishy nature of the Marine Halibut, giving me the best of both worlds in one simple mix. Depending on the conditions I will then add one of the following groundbaits: Silver-X Skimmer: This contains a lot of particles, good for holding large shoals and it is perfect for both skimmers and bream. Swim Stim F1 Sweet: This is added when there is a bit of colour in the water and I want a brighter groundbait mix. It also works well when you are using a lot of corn. Swim Stim Amino Black: I add this when the water is cold and clear. During the colder months I like to fish more groundbait and very little particle. This prevents filling up the fish too quickly. To mix, I add two parts of the base mix (Bream and Halibut) to one part of the extra groundbait. In this way, a few bags of groundbait will last a few sessions.
Bream bagging
When dealing with aquatic ‘cows’, I lay down a bed of feed, ideally before the bream shoal turns up because they don’t respond well to regular casting over their heads. To this end I use what I call my ‘dustbin’ feeder! It’s almost the size of a Coke can and enables me to feed half a pint of loosefeed every cast. I make three casts at the start using this feeder, either all groundbait or with a few particles. I then swap to the smaller feeder to fish with, putting more particle through this one rather than any groundbait, which is used only to plug the feeder. My side tray contains all the usual bream baits – casters, chopped worm, maggots and sweetcorn. If there are a lot of smaller fish in the swim I feed 3mm halibut pellets. The reason for this is that although bream love casters, so does everything else that swims. The pellets help discourage these tiddlers. On the hook, the best bait is often worm and caster, but as the swim was full of small perch, I quickly swapped over to hair-rigged corn and a yellow Dynamite Slow Sinking Nugget, to give the corn a slower fall through the layers. After this, it is a case of making six to seven casts an hour. This is enough to get plenty of loosefeed down but not so much casting that it spooks the shoal. As predicted, things started slowly. The perch were initially a nuisance, but once the bream turned up I caught steadily for the next couple of hours, landing a dozen big bream. The swim then died until 30 minutes later when I had a four-foot twitch on the rid tip which turned out to be a 12lb-plus barbel! The club asks anglers not to put barbel in keepnets, so this proved to be the last fish of the day. But what a day it was. A load of big slabs and a ‘Barney Rubble’ barbel. I can honestly say, I’ve had worst days!