Don’t be afraid to rest your lines

I always used to be of the opinion when bream fishing that you put your bait in, fished down one hole and waited for the bream to turn up.

I’d never felt that fishing multiple lines was an option, as you could easily be fishing one line while the fish were on another, cleaning up your feed without you knowing anything about it!

However, my tactics changed after spending a bit of time at Southfield Reservoir, in South Yorks.

As Southfield is shallow, the bream don’t seem to settle and are easily spooked, so casting repetitively down one hole all day in the summer just doesn’t work.

Instead, you need two or even three lines you can rotate and rest to keep bites coming.

On the Super League round at Southfield I had a line at 28m and one at 60m, with an option to open another swim at 16m if I needed.

It was then a case of rotating the lines to keep things ticking over.

The interesting part is that your first cast on a new line always gives you your best chance of a bite, which shows that the fish move over your bait when there isn’t a feeder in the swim.

Since fishing Southfield, a resting line is something I’ve adopted at other venues too – with a good deal of success.