1st session ever fishing for big bream

I had been told of these double figure bream that can be found in a large lake in Oxfordshire by a few friends. They had been fishing there for a few years and had caught some good fish.

They had invited me to fish on several occasions but somehow I was always fishing for tench and didn’t have time. Because the tench fishing was slow last year I decided to try for the bream until they spawn and then move onto the tench. Well that was the plan!

So this week was the first 48 hr session that I could fit in. I had been up at the lake with two friends late last week to pre-bait a swim to get the bream feeding in the swim.

It was great to see some gravel where the bait had been cleared either by the bird population or by fish, but at least it was clear.

I was shocked by the amount of bait that is used in bream fishing and the boy’s said that this was the norm! Any how I was going to use vitalin as a base ground bait with molasses and sweetcorn added. Combined with this was to be some pellet and pellet ground bait for the method feeders. One of them had bought a boat along so we did a little searching of the swim and found a couple of gravel bars. I didn’t fancy fishing these until I had cleared the weed off them first so that,s for the next visit.

Now where are those bream

I baited for the first night hoping for some action and with the bream being nocturnal feeders on this lake it couldn’t get dark quick enough. I was listening to the Man Utd game in the Champions league when the middle rod tore off and I soon hooked into the fish that pulled back quite hard and even managed to take me under nearby tree branches. Now the boy’s told me that the bream didn’t fight but this one did. Then as it came into view under the head lamp I could see it was in fact a tench and a reasonable size too.

7lb tench

I quickly slipped into a Queensford or pike tube and recast again. I was expecting the bream to move in. Wrong even after casting out hourly not another bite came along.

On rowing out the next day all the bait was still in the swim. Bugger.

So after more deliberations we decided to put more bait into the swim. Well after another 12hours fishing through the night not a sausage came along. I didn’t see any fish roll or show themselves. It was pretty much windless so I could observe a large proportion of the lake too.

Hope to get better sunsets than this effort

Anyhow by 9.30am I need to be packing up again and heading home. 48hrs fishing with no bream but a bonus tench saved me from a blank. This is going to be a steep learning curve for me as I’ve got about 5 weeks before they spawn me thinks. Oh and by the way two days worth of bait untouched could be seen.

So it’s the same next week other than I’ll put in some more pellets and fish further out onto the gravel bar. With one rod on the top and the other on the downward slope towards me.

I’ll explain about rigs and other baiting techniques when I have them sorted. The guy’s couldn’t believe I didn’t catch but that’s fishing.