Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Rob Perkins
Bag up on bream on the pole
SLAB- sided, browsing, idle, stately, longlived are all words that describe the popular Abramis brama. It’s a species that is better known to coarse anglers as the common or bronze bream.
As they cruise around in shoals like a herd of grazing sheep, they are capable of giving the angler a big hit – if they are, first, lucky enough to find them and then fish well enough to hold them in the swim.
The disadvantage of bream is that, being out- and- out shoal fish, if you do happen to spook one of them through a mistimed strike, its friends will quickly panic. The once heavilyfeeding mass will disappear faster than smoke in a strong breeze.
Bream are a firm favourite among match anglers because they offer the chance of a large weight and, when it comes to targeting them, most of us look no further than fishing long on the feeder. This is no doubt due to the old angling saying that ‘ you can’t fish too close in for tench or too far out for bream’.
The advantages of the pole
For today’s session, I have come to the lovely Woodland Waters near Ancaster. This complex consists of five large sandpits which contain very little weed. These offer the perfect conditions for bream, as they aren’t big fans of the green stuff. The lakes are fairly deep and the Match Lake, where I’m fishing for this feature, has an average depth of 12ft.
When it comes to fishing for bream, the feeder is extremely effective. There are, however, several advantages to targeting them on the pole when faced with this depth close in.
The first is that it enables much better bait presentation. This in itself is enough to tip the big- fish balance in your favour.
Second, when they do turn up, you can land them much faster and more efficiently, a great boon to any match angler, like me!
A further advantage, especially when fishing traditionally with long hooklinks and a feeder, is that fish can pick up and eject the hookbait many times without giving a single indication on the quivertip. This won’t happen on the pole.
And finally, as the rig is presented top down, there is no mainline cutting through the swim from the rod tip to the rig, which can lead to line bites and ill- advised strikes. Foul- hooking a bream, even one on the outskirts of the shoal, can be the kiss of death.
Using conventional pole tactics makes it so much easier to read the float and, in turn, better understand exactly what is going on in the swim.
Going on a liquid diet
I recently had the opportunity to use the new DB1 binder liquids from Dynamite Baits.
They are designed to add extra binding power to your groundbait, typically to cope with deeper venues and flowing water. With many rivers in flood in the run- up to the closed season, I didn’t have a chance to use the liquids in running water. I have still been able to experiment with some slightly unusual uses, though.
The liquids can be added to the water you mix your groundbait with or it can be added to already mixed groundbait to alter its properties. It’s the latter application that has intrigued me the most.
My regular winter haunt is Ulley reservoir, near Rotherham, a venue that has some very deep pegs – up to 30ft – and I have always used a fairly sticky mix. I like to mix my groundbait the night before and opt for a kind of ‘ one mix fits all’ for the pole line, but this has always been a little bit of a compromise with regard to the shallower areas. What the new liquids enabled me to do was to mix a bait that was more suited to the shallower pegs at Ulley. I could then simply add some of the binding liquid on the bank to adapt the mix if I drew in the deeper Quarry pegs.
This led me to pondering about other uses for the liquids and I set about experimenting to make groundbait balls break down really slowly. After trying different ratios, I found the perfect combination. To one litre of groundbait, which will make four good- sized balls or several smaller top- ups, add 40ml of liquid. The tightly moulded balls take around an hour to break down, slowly releasing any loosefeed contained within them into the swim.
What I have been doing this winter is to ball in a softer, lighter mix to create a carpet and then use some of the same mix with the liquid added to feed slow breakdown balls. These gradually release their attractants into the peg.
This has helped to hold the fish in my peg for longer with occasional top- ups, after 3040 minutes, just before the previous ball has released all its bait.
Bait options
Woodland Waters is a new water for me and so I had a chat with Pete the bailiff prior to selecting a peg. The first job was plumbing up. I had decided to fish just one line at 13m, targeting the large shoals of bream and skimmers. Finding the depth to be 12ft at 13m, I set up a 1.5g float on a 0.18mm ( 6lb) mainline.
I use this diameter as it enables me to step up the hooklength if the fish are responding well, but also, because the line is thicker and stiffer, it helps to prevent tangles and spin- ups in deep water. At the business end, I have a 6in hooklink of 0.10mm ( 2lb 6oz) to a size 18 hook. This enables me to try a variety of hookbaits, from single maggot to bits of worm. Bream have a habit of changing their minds about what they want all the time!
The rig is shotted with a 1.2g olivette 2ft from the hook with three No. 10 Stotz spaced at 6in
intervals to trim the float perfectly. There are several spare No. 10s incorporated in the rig, near the olivette, so I can alter the rig to offer a slower fall by moving the olivette away and spreading out these shot.
My choice of groundbait today is two parts Dynamite Silver- X Skimmer Mix with one part each of Swim Stim Silver- Fish Dark and Big Fish Explosive Caster. The Swim Stim adds a little fishmeal and darkens the mix, and the Explosive Caster softens the mix. This combination makes a lovely soft fluffy blend, from which I have separated enough to make eight balls to throw in.
“The peg got even stronger through the day and when I came to lift my net out for a catch shot I was surprised”
These eight balls are squeezed lightly, so that they break apart as they go through the water. They also contain very little feed, just the odd dead maggot and caster, but should create a carpet of groundbait for fish to graze over.
I have then taken two litres of this initial mix and added 50ml- 60ml of the DB1 Bream liquid. This will carry all my loosefeed, which consists of finely minced worms, casters and dead maggots. I have then cupped in three of these particle- rich balls – compacted really hard – into the centre my peg. This gives me a bullseye of loosefeed around the hookbait.
New- venue success
Beginning with a single maggot, set an inch or so overdepth, I was fully expecting a slow start to the day. I was right. Just a couple of small skimmers and perch came in the first hour. A change to double maggot brought a 4lb bream, quickly followed by a few more small fish. This prompted me to cup in another feed- rich ball. Almost immediately, I had another bream and a few smaller ones.
Time to change hookbait for a piece of redworm set 6in overdepth. This had the desired effect and a steady stream of skimmers and bream began coming to the net.
I also stepped up my hooklink to 0.14mm ( 5lb 2oz) and a size 14 hook with a big lump of worm tipped with a red maggot.
Keeping the swim topped- up with a feed- rich ball every 30 minutes meant that this new ball was fed before the previous ball had fully broken down. This enabled me to generate a steady release of loosefeed in the swim without the use of a catapult, which would have brought the fish up in the water. This slight change of tactics attracted more and more fish into the peg and I began to get liners.
To combat this, I slid my three droppers down to the 6in hooklength to make a double bulk and set the float 6in overdepth so the bulk was sitting just off the bottom. This meant I could now ignore the dips and twitches on the float and wait for either a positive lift or for the float to go under and stay under. This all helped to distinguish proper bites from liners. The last hour saw so many fish in my peg, I had to put the pole on my spray bar and fold my arms to ensure I only struck at proper bites! The peg got even stronger through the day and when it came to lift my net out for a catch shot I was surprised. I’d amassed a decent haul of quality skimmers and bream to more than 5lb. Quite some catch from a lovely fishery, especially early season, with water temperatures still very low.
So, the next time you automatically reach for the feeder gear when setting off on a bream session, stop and think whether the pole could actually be better.