Second session after the big bream

So another week passes by and it’s a time for bream again. Tuesday’s jobs completed by noon and the car is loaded up and off I go to the bream lake. First though I pick up some pellets for ground bait via Hinders in Swindon.

The weather had been very good with temperatures being 14c for the day and down to 5c at night. No frosts!

I fished the same swim again as last week. This time though I was going to fish the gravel bar that runs about 28 to 30 yds out in front of me. Dan was coming with the boat at about 7pm so I baited the near swim with maggots and hemp and used method feeders with plastic sweetcorn on the far bar. The maggots were just put at the bottom of the near shelf in an effort to attract tench as they crused around the lake.

Looking out from the bivvi

Dan came along at 7.15pm and quickly we were out in the boat looking at the gravel bar. It looked as though nothing much had cleared the weed form the top so signs were not encouraging. Still undeterred I baited with pellet, sweetcorn, pigeon mix and hemp. In all about 1.5 buckets of the stuff. The bait was to be pellet on the hook and plastic sweetcorn soaked in betalin which is a sweetener flavour.

Traps are set

So with the rods cast out and Dan going home for a well deserved dinner I sat back listening to Man Utd again. I was drifting into a sleep when at 11.30pm the rod with the pellet was away. Again the fish pulled back harder than I thought a bream would and sure enough another dark tench of 5lbs 4oz came to the net.

Small dark tench 5lbs 4oz

I recast the rods again as the fish had fouled the other lines.

That was it for the entire night not one bleep or sound from the indicators. Still no blanking for me. But I’m still learning.

Still got the learner plates

The next day dawned bright and sunny and I was out in the boat looking at how much bait had gone…..not alot. Bugger these bream can be nauseating at times. I spent the next day messing around with maggots again trying to find some tench but nothing came along. Dan was due to be fishing over night just down the bank from me. He arrived later and we had a chat while he made his rigs. Then we found some clear patches of gravel in front of his swim where we put in some markers for baiting up later.I had a sleep for an hour in the afternoon. Soon though it was time to get about our business of baiting the swims. So it wasn’t until early evening that I first put some bait out on my gravel bar. Putting out slightly more this time two buckets of bait.

Dan did his and while he was doing this I noticed some activity of fish on the surface about 100yds to my right. We both thought though that they were carp.

We listened to Chelsea v  PSG on the radio as we had our final brew of the night. Again nothing happened for much of the night. The air was pretty still with a cloudless sky perfect for spotting rolling bream, well that’s if there were some to watch. I drifted off to sleep only to be woken by the alarm sounding on the indicator. The bobbin rose to the top then dropped back down, that has got to be bream. Well I had a few more liners through to about 4.30am when they stopped.

At about 5am the mist started to fall around the lake and by morning it was so thick I couldn’t see the tree line on the far bank that I used for aligning my casts with. So when 6am came and I need to recast I couldn’t. So I went back to sleep with the condensation from the trees dripping on the bivvi sending me off.

Then the mist drifted in

8am came and I was eating my porridge without a sight of the far bank. It was very thick mist. Dan too was blanking.

I had to leave at 10am however I had the boat out again when the mist cleared to see my two nights ground bait still in the swim. Dan was drifting around in the boat while I packed up. He gave a shout and said come and look at this. So as I put on the life jacket (never go in a boat without one) he said you will want to change swims. Sure enough there were two spots where there was golden gravel. We did a couple clip up’s on the patches so that later at home I could see that they were 34 and 18 yds from the bank. Great stuff.

Tools of the trade

So he put some bait on them before he left and lets hope that some bream move in and clean the patch.

Can’t wait for the next visit.