bream

can any one tell me the best way to catch bream on my local mere its only about 3-4foot deep and you can not use ground baite only in a feeder as i have just taken up fishing after 15 years and i am very rusty.dave

Use very large openend feeders and build up the swim with groundbait over the first hour/hour and a half by constantly recasting every 3-5 minutes. Casting accurately is the key to this game, so put the line under the line clip at the particular distance you wish to fish and pick an object on the skyline as your target to aim at.

Within the time frame you’ll have got sufficient groundbait in a tight spot to hold the bream when they come along.

thanks very much for that will try it in next day or so

I'd do the same Dave.

My local estate lake also has a GB in feeders only rule (no spodding either), so depending on how much i need to put in initialy I will have between 6 and 30 chucks with the feeder to get some in.

During this time I will not have a hooklength on, for two reasons. Firstly i dont want to actualy hook a fish until ive got the required amount of bait out for them to settle on, secondly the repeated casting and quick retrieve is likelytwist the hooklength so may as well not have one on.

also, dont squeeze your GB in too tightly, you want it all to come out as sood as you start to retrieve it, a few big maggots in with it helps this.

"a few big maggots in with it helps this."

Why didn't I think of that? Sounds like a top tip !

thaks for your help lads .would it be worth trying the metherd feeder

Phil and Beecy are experienced bream anglers and itmight be worth seeing what you catch follwing their advice above before trying anything else.

how ong should the hook lengh be

I find about 18" is a good starting point

ive got a few thoughts on this though,its one ive been pondering over for a good while,i'll try to give a better answer tonite if i get time before the match

Beecs, the match is this afternoon isn't it?

bollox, forgot about that, i knew I was planning on finishing early one day this week !

Length of hooklength is all about finding the balance between getting them to take a bait and seeing a bite.

It figures that the shorter the hooklength you have, the sooner you will see a bite. This obviously depends on which way a fish moves off with it.

If you assume your 18in hooklength is laid out in a straightish line going away from you ( achieved by a slow pull back immediately after the feeder touches bottom) two things can happen. if the fish moves away from you in any direction you will see a bite straight away, but if it moves towards you it may have to travel 3ft before you see a (drop back) bite. the loger the hooklength then the worse this becomes, a 3ft HL could have to be moved 6ft to register on the tip

The simple answer then would be to use a much shorter HL, but sometimes they will not take a bait that is sat too close to the feeder, and personaly i dont like short HLs as they are more tangle prone and your bait, if its a live one, can end up inside/underneath the feeder

One rig ive been messing about with is to have a short 3 or 4in HL tied onto the line 2 or 3 ft above the feeder, this gives you the best of both worlds, not too close to the feeder, but the bite will register almost straight away. Im not totaly happy fishing this way though. I dont like the feeder trailing behind a fish when netting it, it can get wrapped round the fish or snag the bottom. Also i have trouble with it twisting round the main line so am not confdent my bait is lying free in the water. Suppose you could use a helicopter type set up, but this is not for me. i dont want to be messing around with beads and rings and stuff

this sort of talk probably needs a dedicated thread, im no rigs expert but loads on here are

Beecy, the rig you describe is what we used on the meres 40 years and more ago. We called it a paternoster. You could fish it fixed (which we did most of the time) or running. I always preferred to connect the hooklink to the main line via a swivel as this helped to prevent some line twist when retrieving. Also, I always felt it was safer than a waterknot.

Most of the lads who bream fished the meres used the fixed paternoster and maybe some still do. Some of the lads used two hooks above the bomb or feeder, although I never did.

Our rig used a 3in to 1ft hooklength 3ft to 5ft from the bomb or feeder.The length of the hooklink was varied according to how much weed was on the bottom, although the standard rig used a 6in hooklink 3ft above the bomb.

I mainly used it with a bomb rather than a feeder. When I used a feeder I would swap the feeder to the short link and the hook to the long link. That way, once the feeder had emptied, I could draw the hookbait to the feed. It was no coincidence we got many bites immediately following that little ploy.

I still rate it as one of the best non-specific bolt rigs you can use.

Its about time you piped up on some of the recent feeder/bream threads Graham !

The short HL above the feeder/bomb is called the 'dink' rig round here, but as i said, i dont like it. My standard rig is a fixed paternoster type, a 3 in loop with a 6-8in tag end.

feeder goes on the loop,another loop tiedon the tag end to take the HL.

Ive never seen the need for swivels, beads or any other bits and bats you can use, i like it as simple as you can get. Worth pointing out though that were probably talking about different types of breaming. My game is match style fishing rather than the speci aproach

Talking of double hooking Graham, we used to use this on worsborough res, main one on about 2ft witha 3in one about half way

dont know why we bothered realy as most (say 90%) came to the bottom hook, and you allways had the problem of the top hook catching the landing net

Beecy, I'm not too clearwhat you mean.

You wrote:

"One rig ive been messing about with is to have a short 3 or 4in HL tied onto the line 2 or 3 ft above the feeder, this gives you the best of both worlds."

And then I described the fixed paternoster we used on the meres which fits your description above.

And then you wrote:

"The short HL above the feeder/bomb is called the 'dink' rig round here, but as i said, i dont like it."

Which seems to contradict what you said earlier.

It could be me/forum/smilies/smile_smiley.gif

Oh, and just whisper when you mention loop rigs as there are some on here that definitely don't like it....

Out of the Loop by Lee Swords

But here's one that has a different viewpoint:

The Myth about Death Rigs by Jeff Woodhouse

Two hook rigs: I didn't use them because I always feared that the second hook could interfere (by snagging)with a bite on the other hook. And that the loose hook could snag when playing a fish on the other hook.

But I have to say that those who used two hooks didn't seem to have a problem. I also have to say that I never felt handicapped when fishing my two hooks on two rods alongside those with four hooks on two rods.

no contradiction Graham, the bit further along the sameline says it

"One rig ive been messing about with is to have a short 3 or 4in HL tied onto the line 2 or 3 ft above the feeder, this gives you the best of both worlds, not too close to the feeder, but the bite will register almost straight away. Im not totaly happy fishing this way though. "

were on about similar rigs Graham, the short HL above the feeder. I was just giving it as an option, i dont like it personaly, ive been trying it as the worsborough regulars swear by it, and they are some of the best feeder anglers around,but i just cant get on with it.

I probably didnt descripe the loop set up too well, im not on about the feeder runing insine an in-line loop, im on about a stand off loop with the feeder fixed on the end, its still a fixed rig though

I dont give a monkeys about the fixed/safe rig debate, i use what i like and what i am comfortable with

whats your veiw on twitching the bait for bream Graham ?

I know it can work now and again, but im not sure that the bait moving is actualy inducing a take, i reckon your just pulling the hook into one thats already got it in its mouth but hasnt moved off yet

When I fished for bream regularly I used to twitch the bait a lot, and what you say about it may have been a fish with the bait already in its mouth could be very true in some cases. But not all cases, for although I said we got many bites immediately following the twitch I was including those that followed a few seconds later.

Those that already had the bait in their mouths you usually felt them when you twitched it back. A 'twitch' in my case though was usually several inches or even a foot or so. I varied it.