The day of the Bream

Sunday 4th April

I was back on the new water for todays trip, after a walk round yesterday i had spotted a couple of likely looking spots which looked well worth a go. The area is practically bang opposite where i fished the other day but the islands arnt such a long chuck and its well away from the disturbance of all the dog walkers and duck feeders!

Tactics-wise i decided to go straight in with the maggot bolt feeder, the only difference was that i had shortened the hooklinks to about 3 inches to try and convert a few of those twitches into hooked fish. There was a light north-westerly blowing in, the sun was out and the water temp came back at 9 degrees so things were looking a bit better than they did the other day.

I began by having half a dozen casts on each line to lay some feed down and then sat back to await events. After about an hour i had a slow drop-back on the right hand rod and struck into a heavy feeling fish. I imediately thought Bream and sure enough, after the usual wet sack-like fight, i soon had a half decent fish of 7lb2oz on the mat.

This set the precident for the next 5 hours and besides landing a Tench of 5lb4oz, i went on to land seven more Bream. The smallest went 5lb but the average was around 6-7lb so a pretty decent bag of fish all in all.





For some reason though, apart from the one Tench i hadnt hooked any others and it was the Tench that i was down there for to be honest . I decided to try casting off the baited area to see if the Tench were holding back or something to no avail. I never had a sniff for an hour on either rod so it was back on the baited area exept this time i put red maggots on the hook as opposed to the whites id been using all morning.
Two male Tench of 4lb2oz and 4lb4oz in two casts told me they obviously prefer the reds! I tried the whites again to see if it made a difference and promptly hooked two more Bream, landing one and dropping the other.

I dont know whether changing the maggot colour was coincidence or not but it seemed strange how ,after catching all those Bream, a change to reds brought two Tench and back to whites produced more Bream?

Although the Bream were of a size that any matchman would be proud of, i dont think the water has the potential for any real specimens of 10lb or more. There may be the odd one scraping that size but i dont fancy working my way through hundreds of 5-7lbers just to get one double. Its the Tench that the water contains which interest me so i think ill leave the place alone now till mid-May when the bigger girls are much more active and hopefully theyll compete with the Bream a bit more for the bait.
In the meantime my kit needs a bloody good clean cos theres nowt like a bag of bream to make it stink to high heaven!! Ive got every cat within a five-mile radius outside my house!
As a footnote, i noticed quite a few lily pads starting to unfold just beneath the surface around the margins, a sure sign the warmer weathers just around the corner, bring it on!