SPECIES: BREAM EXPERT: Mike Lyddon

A respected big-fish angler, Mike has caught bream to an impressive personal best of 17lb 10oz

F YOU are looking to beat a personal best this year, target gravel pit bream. Not only are they magnificent-looking fish, but specimen pit bream are almost idiot-proof to catch, so legendary is their greed and appetite!

Locating your quarry

The great thing about these slab-sided fish is they are creatures of habit, regardless of where they are found. But the first rule when targeting gravel pit bream is locating the fifish. fish. They spend most of their time away from bankside disturbance, in the deeper water where the light levels are much lower. At dawn or dusk they often give themselves away by topping, making shoal location very simple. Bream shoals have regular patrol routes as well as regular haunts, which may typically hold a lot of natural food, for example. If you can locate one of these zones, you’re halfway there to filling your boots every time. If you are intending to regularly fifish fish pits for bream you should invest in a marker float set-up that will make your session so more productive because you will quickly be able to pinpoint underwater features. Bream despise weed, and I always feed over a clean bottom. If I can find a large gravel patch, then that’s all the better.

Priming the spot

Bream love their food, so it is paramount you give them plenty to eat. When I get to my swim,

the first item out of the car is my groundbait mixture as I like to give it at least 20-30 minutes to fully soak. Bream love of sweet fishmeal mixes. To boost the groundbait I add the juice from a tin of Tutti Frutti sweetcorn and a good splash of Sticky Krill liquid. Regarding hookbaits, I often fish with three rods with different baits on each – an F1 S Pellet, a piece of fake corn soaked in Betalin and an 8mm pineapple pop-up boilie. Even though the majority of the loosefeed is fifishmeal-based, fishmeal-based, I use sweet hookbaits because the bream home in on them quicker. As the session progresses, if one bait outfifishes outfishes the others I will swap the rods over to that particular hookbait.

Tackling up for slabs

Although you are looking to target specimens, there is no need to spend hundreds of pounds on specialist kit. Because gravel pits tend to be quite large, a heavier rod than you might use on a commercial will be needed, something with a test curve between 1.5lb and 2.25lb. This will enable you to make longer casts and leave a little power in reserve if you hook a big carp. The rest of my set-up is really rather straightforward. The mainline is 10lb Gardner Pro to a 3ft lead-free leader, with a flflying flying back lead threaded on above the leader. This helps the terminal end lie flat on the deck, preventing line bites that could possibly spook the shoal. For my feeder, I take a cue from match anglers, turning to flatbed Method feeders which I load with groundbait. The hooklink is 4in of Speci Skin with the coating removed, leading to a size 10 barbless Target hook.

Theory into practice

I’ll start a session by baiting up with 4kg of my groundbait and corn mix, spread over a circular area around 15ft in diameter. All three rods will be fished over this. The time of year dictates how often I recast. In summer, when small fish are at their most active, I’ll cast every 30 minutes. In cooler conditions I recast every 90 minutes to two hours. After I’ve had a fish or two, I like to rebait the area with four to six Spombs. Bream are shoal fish, so after a couple of bites much of the loosefeed will have been eaten. With bream having massive appetites, it pays to top up so you can hold the shoal over your baited area.