Large shoals of river bream tend to lay-up during the daylight hours, although this isn't 100%. I personally find it much more productive to fish during the evening and through the hours of darkness.

My first target area would be preferably still-water upstream of a marina/boatyard - offset from the main river, or an oxbow walk upstream from the marina. Plumb for depth changes, depressions in the river bed and look for a silty bottom with minimal weed, (unless it can be removed with a rake). It can be an advantage to walk the stretch of river in the evening to look for signs of bream rolling.

Start the campaign by pre-baiting the area to be fished every other evening for six days, for this I use 30% Vitalin, 30% brown crumb, 20% boiled corn, 10% trout pellet, 10% crushed hemp. On top of this I would put in any discarded maggots I've frozen down from previous fishing trips (never throw any away, they can be frozen - to be used later in pre-baiting).

As this is quite a task, I share the job with my fishing partner Nigel Pankhurst. Each mix is of approximately 150 tangerine sized-balls (20 to 30 litres of dry mix), catapulted tightly into the target area to avoid splitting the shoals. PV1 binder will help keep the bait together without too much break-up.

On the morning before we fish, we drag the swim in front of us so we don't have trouble during the night with losing fish in the weeds. This can take a couple of hours, but it's time well spent.

The tackle I use is a 12ft 1.5 t.c. rod with a 2oz quiver tip with 6lb Maxima to a 5000GTE, the terminal tackle is usually a cage feeder paternoster by 9in with a size 14 to 10 micro-barb specialist hook fished on a 14in hook length of Drennan/Sylcast. Nige prefers braid - which does give a better indication as to what is happening, but my preference is old school.

For hookbaits I use dendrabena tipped with red maggot. The feeder bait is brown/red crumb mixed with Brasem, crushed trout pellet, crushed hemp and flaked bran which helps with a quick breakdown from the feeder.

A maggot feeder is used before the initial shoal arrive during the last daylight hours and at dawn when the fish seem to be very wary, a size 16 hook baited with 2-3 red maggots seems to pick-up the first and last few fish.

No hook-bait is put in on the last prebait, which is the evening before we fish, this we believe makes the fish look for the hookbaits and using Brasem with dendrabena gives a large signature bait for them to home in on.

Well I think that's about it for bream on the rivers - give it a try.

Chub fishing is next on my list - so I'm off for some local sport before visiting Dodds Weir.

Regards

Graeme Armes

 

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