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Widespread and prolific, bream are an ideal target for the inshore fisho, especially when you keep the gear light. Col Buckley gives us tips on outwitting these finicky feeders.
Light Tackle
The best advice I can give when fishing for bream is to fish as light as you dare. Use the smallest diameter line and the tiniest sinker you can get away with. In still waters, fish without a sinker at all, allowing the bait to be your casting weight.
The hook I favour for bream in most conditions is the suicide Mustad 9555B 1/0 in bait-holder pattern, having burrs on the shank to hold worms and flesh baits in place. However, the new chemically sharpened hooks are now coming out in extra strong which is needed to compensate for the powerful crushing jaws of the fish.
Many years ago, a popular hook for bream (still used by nigger fishermen) was the sneck or spade-end hook. This has a flattened end instead of an eye to tie the line to.
The advantage was that you could slide baits up the hook and onto the line. Great for worms and for pinning yabbies and live prawns! Maybe more anglers would use these hooks if they learned the simple method of tying them to nylon.
Sinkers for bream are a matter of preference. In fast running water the "pickers doom" sinker is very successful. This sinker is shaped like a miniature brick with two lugs on the top. The line runs through the lugs and can be let out for 60-100 metres till a hit is felt.
In most instances a small ball sinker running down to a swivel with a trace of at least a metre will catch fish. A lot of veteran bream fishers still use half a match stick as a stopper for the weight, thus cutting down on metal in the terminal rig. I use black swivels as they are non-reflective and will not spook fish.
A long trace of at least a meter will give the bait a natural, not-anchored action in the water. As the bite of the bream is very tentative, the super long trace allows the fish to gain confidence with the bait without feeling the weight of the sinker.
An extra long trace also stops the angler getting trigger happy and striking too soon. When a hit is transmitted back to the angler, the fish has by that time, usually swallowed the bait and is swimming away with its prize.
Increase the length of the trace for slow flowing or still water. Sinker weight in bream fishing is very important. Clipon sinkers are now available and this makes the job of weight changing a lot easier as the tide ebbs and flows. Use Berley
One ingredient that improves success is berley. Bream are scavengers and opportunist feeders, so with the aid of berley it is possible to anchor somewhere near where bream should be, and attract them to your area.
Chook pellets or stale bread are relatively cheap ways of getting a steady stream of berley out to the fish. Little and often is the key to getting consistent catches.
Prepare the berley mix before you go out and make sure you have enough to last you through the whole session. A teaspoonful of pilchard or tuna oil in the mash will be an added bonus.
There are some die-hard Hawkesbury River bream fishos who swear there is no better berley than boiled wheat, and it's a berley that I have used with frequent success. I have gutted bream after a session with wheat and found their stomachs crammed full of the seed. Why bream like wheat, and what they mistake it for has me baffled. Ail I know is that it works more often than not.
When fishing quiet backwaters disperse berley quietly by lowering it in mesh bags or in a tin with large holes punched in the sides. Throwing it out in clumps will only drive fish away to quieter pastures.
Be careful in fast flowing territory that your berley is working for you and not some bloke 300 metres downstream! When the bite gets hot and the icebox starts to look respectable, don't forget to keep that berley trickle going as you bring'em in.
Bream bites shut down as quick as they start. The fish won't hang around if nothing is going to keep them there. Vary Baits
Although bream enjoy a wide variety of food, they can be very fussy in what they decide will be eaten on a particular day. To persevere in trying to tempt the fish with an appetising bait that is not on the bream's menu at that time will prove fruitless.
To overcome this taste fetish in the fish, it is wise to take out as many baits as you can get your hands on and then keep changing bait 'till you strike success. Baits could include live nippers, live prawns, slices of pilchard, blood or beach worms, squid, oysters, chicken or mullet gut and home-made "pudding" bait, to name but a few. Conditions
Night breaming on neap tides (where there is a low high tide and a high low tide, giving little water movement), with a dark moon, is when I have found most success. Up to the top of the tide and the hour or so after the tide has peaked has shown, over the years, to be productive on my patch.
Dark, overcast days also produce fish, but having the sun directly on the water usually sends bream into retreat and there are long waits between bites.
As bream taste everything they swallow, be very careful about transmitting odours to the bait. A smidgen of oil or petrol on the fingers will make the wily bream spurn even the most succulent offering.
A tip here is to have a tube of bait scent in the boat and every so often, wash your hands in the water and then rub some of the bait scent in like hand cream. The hot weather makes us sweat and when this gets on to bait and terminal tackle, it is also a turn off to the fish. Estuary Fishing
Locations for bream fishing are varied. For the estuary angler, a good place to start is around oyster leases because bream love to feed off oysters.
Our oyster farmers consider bream a pest and often protect their leases by wrapping rolls of chicken wire around the perimeters. Fish the deeper side of the lease during the day and move to shallower water as the sun goes down. Bream will venture into water only a couple of feet deep in search of food under the cover of darkness.
Stealth is required not to spook larger fish. In fact I have fished with a bloke who had hessian sacks over the floor and gunwales of his boat so that all noise was muted. It worked. We did catch some big specimens that night!
If you have an estuary with a steep rocky shoreline, such as the Hawkesbury River in N.S.W., bream will often be found feeding on the marine growth of the submerged rocks around the intertidal zone. When drifting past the rocky shoreline, cast ahead and let the boat catch up to your line before you retrieve.
Light whippy rods and small threadlines will allow you to cast unweighted - a very successful method with bream. If you have to use a weight, a small pea sinker running right down to the hook to stop snagging, can be employed. Reef Fishing
Shallow water reef fishing, up to 30 metres (15 fathoms) will yield bream if you employ roughly the same tactics as snapper fishing. A small sliding ball sinker, with a swivel as a stopper, or if conditions allow, weightless, will get results.
Cast out and let the rig drift down as slow as the current will allow. A good bait to start with is a tempting sliver of pilchard or squid on a No1/0 hook with a small keeper to prevent the bait from slumping.
Berleying, from the surface to the sea floor, is still a pre-requisite for a successful day. I have found bream caught on the close outside reefs are generally larger than their estuary counterparts. Lure Fishing
An entertaining way to spend a few hours is to go lure fishing for bream. The last few years has seen an upsurge in anglers chasing 'ol silver sides with bits of plastic and wood spiked with a little hardware.
There are a number of lures on the market that have proved very successful on bream, including Mad Mullets, Mann's stretch No5+, small Bombers and Crawfish, to name but a few.
Once again target structure such as oyster leases, wharves and reef or rock areas. Keep the retrieve very slow and by flicking the rod tip, give the lure plenty of action. Bream hit lures hard so be prepared for the sudden stop.
As the bream has a very hard bony mouth, I suggest you replace the trebles on the lure with the new chemically sharpened variety. This way you will get better penetration and more hook-ups. Experiment with bait scents on the lure if the action is a bit slow, and don't be afraid to work very shallow water. Practice Brings Rewards
Breaming is an art. It takes a while to catch fish consistently, but for those who put the hours in on the water, the rewards are there.
Keep a detailed record of your bream fishing sorties. Eventually a trend will show which will get you amongst the action more often. Remember that bait variety is important. Bream, and what they are going to eat on that particular day, can be as trying as a pregnant woman's culinary whims.
Scaled and gutted, bream take well to the freezer to keep as a stand-by meal. It is a great fish for barbecuing and the creative chef can do wonders with the sweet delicate flesh.
RECIPE FOR HOME MADE PUDDING BAIT
Take three or four fat style beef or pork sausages. Squeeze the contents into a bowl and discard the skins. Add a cup or so of flour and fair sprinkling of parmesan cheese and then knead the mix into a stiff dough. Add more flour if needed until you can roll a little bit of the mix into a ball without it sticking to your fingers.
Now this is where your creativity comes in. I have tried different perfumes for my pudding bait by adding aniseed, tuna and pilchard oil, chicken fat, Enos Health Salts and beef cubes to name a few. Experiment, and see what proves to be successful in your area.
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