How to fish the feeder for bream in rivers
In 1956 a 15-year-old Dave Bosher, fishing on the Child Beale stretch of the River Thames, hooked his fi rst decent bream.
This fish started a love affair with river bream fishing that has continued for over 50 years.
Now, he’s back in the swim where it all began, an area that he has grown up near and fished in for the past half century.
Similar to all those years ago, the River Thames’ bream shoals are still here and they are here in abundance.
“I remember seeing shoals over 100-yards long and from bank to bank; literally hundreds of thousands of them,” said Dave.
“It’s a sight that I have never forgotten and it keeps drawing me back - year in, year out.” With a commendation this good, we just had to send the IYCF cameras along to the Child Beale stretch, located in Theale Park, near Pangbourne, Berkshire, for a masterclass in river bream fishing.
With five decades of know how and experience under his belt Dave had to be the perfect choice to take us through the finer points of catching big, slabsided River Thames bream…
THE FIGHT OF A RIVER BREAM
Punching his groundbait swimfeeder 60 yards across the river, it landed with pinpoint accuracy over the area he’d been baiting.
Moments later, a large splash on the surface revealed Dave had got the bream going - the fish were rolling over his bait.
“They’ve been having it all morning,” Dave revealed. “It took an hour to get the first bite, but since then it has been fish-after-fish.”
Placing the rod on his raised rod rest, Dave carefully tightened up to the feeder, placing a slight bend in the quivertip of his feeder rod.
A few minutes later he had a sharp line bite, no doubt caused by a big slad-sided bream turning in the water,. Within seconds the tip sprang back as a fish picked up his hookbait and dislodged the feeder.
A broad sweeping strike over his right shoulder saw Dave pick up the line and connect with a hefty fish. Standing up, to get a better angle to hold the bream out of the weedbeds littering the bottom, he deliberately played the fish towards the bank.
Unlike their flabby, lake-bound cousins that can fight a wet paper bag, river bream fight like tigers.
Once they turn their broad bodies into the flow, they use the current to test your tackle to the very edge of breaking point.
It took Dave over five minutes to bring the fish from where he was fishing, 60 yards out, to a position where he could successfully land the creature.
Once it was in the net we were able to appreciate why it had taken so long to land. Weighing just over 8lb, it was a magnificent specimen and testified how good river breaming can be.
PRE-BAITING
Being nomadic, pre-baiting an area the day before you fish can tip the scales in your favour. If you put a bed of bait down you should stop a shoal of bream in its tracks.
These fish are eating machines, spending their days searching for food. If you can give them a load of freebies, you should be able to hold them, as it gives the shoal the confidence to stay in the area.
“I pre-baited an area last night” explained Dave, “not only does this concentrate the shoal, but it helps to get their heads down feeding.”
Dave pre-baits with what he is planning to fish with. In this instance, it comprised four kilos of two-parts brown crumb, onepart Dynamite Baits Black Swim Stim groundbait and a kilo of 3mm pellets.
Although four-kilos isn’t a lot of pre-bait for a big shoal, Child Beale is a match fishing stretch, so it sees a lot of bait.
“I only want to put out enough bait to give the bream a taster of my groundbait mix. They will then be more receptive when it comes to the actual session.”
LOCATING THE SHOALS
One of the hardest things, with regard to river bream fishing, is trying to locate the shoal.
A nomadic species, they can roam for miles along a river, looking for food and stopping off in areas that offer consistent feeding opportunities.
This means the best place to start your bream quest isn’t even by the water. To short-cut the shoal search chat to local experts, such as a tackle dealer or bailiff, to see if you can pinpoint the rivers’ noted bream swims.
“The thing about this stretch is that bream are always here,” Dave said.
“Maybe there is a bloodworm bed out there that attracts them, but for whatever reason they’re always in the same area, year-after-year.
“My advice would be to ask around and once you have found a good area, remember it. Once you have found an area that they like, you have won half the battle.”
CASTING AND KEEPING THE SHOAL
As with stillwater feeder fishing, it is always best to line up the cast with a permanent far bank marker and cast to the line clip. This ensures you are accurately casting every feeder where you want it. Once you have the bream feeding in the area, cast slightly short of your prebaited area. Therefore, if you hook a fish you are not dragging it through the rest of the shoal, which will avoid spooking them. Dave’s final casting tip on rivers is DO NOT twitch the feeder back to empty it, as you would on a stillwater.
“By twitching the feeder back on this stretch you will only pull the hook into weed, ruining the presentation,” said Dave.
TACKLE
For his session on the Thames, Dave was using a Daiwa Connoisseur feeder rod combined with 6lb Berkley Trilene monofilament line.
Unlike many bream anglers, Dave never uses braid, preferring the stretch that mono gives.
“I find mono is more forgiving than braid,” he said.
“Once in the flow these fit river bream put up a tremendous scrap and as braid has no stretch, the fish can easily come off. On a river these fish aren’t shy and when you have to play a big fish through the flow, braid is a recipe for disaster,” he continued.
Six pound line may sound heavy for bream fishing, but when you are making around 100 casts in the day and playing 7lb-plus fish across the flow, it would be suicidal to go lower.
Correct quivertip choice is also vital when river breaming. On a stillwater, it is best to use a very light tip, such as a 1oz model, to register any shy bites. While you still need to fish as light a possible on a river, you must ‘beef’ things up a bit and match the strength of the tip to the strength of flow.
This involves a little trial and error, with Dave suggesting you carry a selection of different weighted tips.
“The best way to select a tip is to start light, around 2oz,” he explained.
“Then cast the empty feeder to where you will be fishing and put the rod on the rest to see how the tip reacts. If the strength of the river bends the tip right round, you are using too light a tip and it will offer too much resistance to a taking fish.
“If the tip remains arrow straight, then the tip is too heavy and will not show delicate bites. If the tip just bends slightly, it is spot on.
“This may sound time consuming, having to tackle down and re-tackle to change tips, but it is better to spend a few minutes getting things right now than spending the next few hours blanking.”
Dave’s choice of swimfeeder for the day was a Drennan Gripmesh. These cage style feeders are ideal for shallow water, but for fishing in deeper water Dave wraps PVC tape around them. This stops the groundbait exiting the feeder too quickly when it hits the water.
“The weight of these feeders is ideal for casting. The groundbait will add another ounce and this balances my set-up perfectly for casting to the area I want to fish,” Dave added.
Dave’s hooklink is 18 inches of 0.16mm (5lb 5oz) WB Clarke Match Team high-tech line.
Again, this might sound heavy, but the weed in the Thames can be very thick and a lighter hooklink will not give you the strength to land the fish. The hook is a strong size 14 Drennan Carbon Chub.
DAVE’S FAVOURITE HOOKBAITS
Four red maggots: This is Dave’s first hookbait choice and the bait he generally kicks off with. Four maggots are a little more selective, but if you start to get plagued with roach and perch swap to another bait.
Worms: Two small dendrobaena worms threaded up the line to leave the hook exposed is Dave’s unique way of presenting worms (below).
“It’s like a reverse hair-rig, where the bait is presented above the hook rather than below it as with a normal hair-rig set-up.”
Double caster: One of the all time classical bream hookbaits, casters are a bait that are loved by bream all over the country (above right).
HOW TO PUT THE GROUNDBAIT TO WORK
Plugging one end of his swimfeeder with groundbait, Dave filled it with casters and then plugging the other end,
He then cast five feeder loads of casters followed by five feederfuls of worms to lay a small bed of feed.
Retrieving the rig, Dave used some groundbait to sandwich casters inside his swimfeeder, threaded two worms onto the hook and cast towards the spot he’d prebaited the day before.
After an hour of recasting every 10 minutes, the bream moved into his swim and Dave started to get among the fish.
It was exciting fishing too, as every bream used the flow to test Dave’s tackle to the limit.
After spending a few hours watching Dave do battle with over 70lb of hardfighting bronzed bream, it became apparent that river ‘slabs’ are a very different beast to their lake-bound counterparts.
If you are the type of person that has always written off bream fishing as boring, lacklustre and dull, then you are definately missing a trick.
Maybe you should head down to your local river and have a few hours fun with these bronze-flanked beasts.
Let’s face it, these fabulous fish have kept Dave Bosher going back to the same swim for 50 years and you don’t get a much better commendation than that!
John Wilson on long trotting on rivers
One of the most productive and most rewarding ways to fish rivers is by long trotting with a float. It allows the angler to search the swim, to try out every nook and cranny in the hunt for roach, chub, barbel and dace.
Long trotting isn’t a method for the lazy angler though – it’s a testing technique that requires great float control, good watercraft skills, plenty of patience and the willingness to explore.
If you’re one of those anglers who wonders what fish lies at the end of each run and glide, then long trotting is for you, and here’s what you need and what to learn to master it…
TACKLE FOR LONG TROTTING
I believe the best reel for long trotting is definitely a good quality centrepin reel. You simply cannot beat the float control gained by using a well-produced centrepin and if you are intent on mastering this river technique, and you have enough spare cash, I would strongly suggest paying £100 or more on a quality ‘pin. You won’t be disappointed.
It’s false economy to pay for a cheaper centrepin as it just will not pay out line at the rate required, and this will mean your bait won’t be presented at the correct speed, therefore it will look unnatural, and therefore you won’t get as many bites.
So, if you cannot afford to buy a quality centrepin, opt to use your favourite fixed spool reel, with the bale arm open, and pay out line with your fingertips.
The perfect rod for long-trotting needs to have a flexible tip and a robust, powerful middle and butt section. This sort of action will ensure you pick up the line swiftly on the strike, and that you connect and manage to control the fish at distances up to 40 yards, against the current.
Nowadays mid-priced 13ft match/waggler rods are built to such a high standard that they are all ideal for long trotting, but if you want the best control opt to use a 14 or 15ft rod. The extra couple of feet will provide that little bit of extra leverage upon the strike, when controlling hooked fish, and when ‘mending’ the mainline.
TERMINAL TACKLE FOR LONG TROTTING
My mainline will depend upon the size of fish that I’m likely to encounter. If the river’s full of roach, dace and small chub then 2.5-3lb mainline will suffice. If there are barbel and big chub present, then I’ll step up to 4lb.
On thing to remember though, is if you are going to use a centrepin reel for bigger river species, don’t overfill the drum. A large fish will cause the line to bed in on the drum, making trotting afterwards really quite difficult, so you’ll only need 150-200 yards of line.
Regarding my hooklength – I much prefer to tie my hook direct to my mainline whenever possible, but there are times when a finer hooklength is needed to trick roach and dace into taking the bait. This is when I’ll use 1.25 – 1.5lb breaking strain hooklength line, joined to the mainline using a four-turn water knot.
FLOATS FOR LONG TROTTING
The main aim of long trotting is to present a bait so that it trundles along the river bed, at the same speed as the current. This means the angler needs to pick a float that will allow this.
The float has to have enough weighting so that the bait is permanently pulled down to the river bed, regardless of the water speed and direction. Lightweight stick floats are far from ideal for a couple of reasons. Firstly the small sight tips will be near impossible to see at distance, and secondly the lightweight shotting required will make the bait jump off the bottom and dance around unnaturally whenever the float is stopped, held back or mended to alter its direction.
I prefer to use heavier floats for this kind of fishing: Chubbers, Loafers, balsa trotters or even Crowquill Avon floats are perfect, because they are best shot with a bulk of BBs or even SSGs positioned 1ft from the hook.
This heavy bulk of shot ensures that the bait is forced down to the bottom at all times, regardless of the strength of the flow.
These floats are attached to the mainline using a couple of float bands – one positioned underneath the sight tip, and one around the base of the float.
TIPS FOR LONG TROTTING
If your float requires 3SSG shot, for example, use six AA shot instead, all grouped together. It’s the same weight, but I have found that a longer group of smaller shots rides over shallower weedy or gravel banks far easier than a few larger shot.
If you notice a particular area of the river where the float continues to be sucked under as it becomes snagged upon weed or debris, don’t suddenly alter the depth of the rig to compensate. This will give your rig the correct depth for that little area, but it will be too shallow for the rest of the swim.
The best solution is to hold the rig back hard as soon as it approaches the snag. This will force the bait to rise up in the water and skip over the snag. Once it’s over the area that has been causing problems, continue running the float through the swim, as before.
During biteless periods, try holding your float back occasionally to make the bait speed up and lift off the bottom. During a free trot through the swim, the float will be in front of the bait, but as soon as you apply finger pressure to the line and stop the float, the bait will speed up, pass the float and lift off the bottom. Although unnatural, this can often trigger chub, dace and grayling into snapping at the bait.
John Wilson’s guide to surface floater fishing for carp
Of all the many different fishing techniques, surface controller float fishing and freelining for the likes of carp, chub and even orfe offers the most challenging and rewarding sport.
The amount of different tricks you can try to tempt a bite are endless, and you have to be on your toes when you’re trying to tempt a specimen carp into sucking in the bait with your hook attached.
Here’s a brief guide to what you need to surface fish, the baits you ought to try and how to get the most from this devastating summer technique…
TACKLE FOR SURFACE FISHING
The rod that you need for fishing baits on the surface with depend upon the distance you are fishing. If you are freelining right under the rod tip or at very short range then a through action rod will be best that will absorb the initial lunge of the fish when using such a short line between the rod tip and the hook.
An Avon rod would be perfect for short range freelining as they tend to bend right through to the butt. These rods, in the 1.25lb test curve bracket are absolutely perfect for smaller carp, up to the 10lb bracket, but if you are intent on hitting into larger fish then you’ll need to step up a little. There are Avon rods that have 1.75 and even 2lb test curves – those are better suited to bigger fish taken at short range.
If you are targeting carp on the surface well out in the middle of the lake, opt for a general purpose 2.5lb test curve carp rod. That will give you the flexibility in the tip section to launch the controller float the distance required, but there will be enough backbone power in the middle and butt section of the rod to drive the hook home and play the fish accordingly.
The reels for surface fishing needn’t be anything special… a reliable and powerful; fixed spool reel will suffice so long as it is loaded up to the brim with an appropriate strength of mono mainline. I would suggest 6lb mainline for smaller carp, and 10-12lb for specimens.
FLOATS FOR SURFACE FISHING
Beyond distances of around 10 yards you’ll need to use a float of some kind to give you the additional weight required to be able to cast your lightweight floating bait. There are many different surface fishing floats available – often called controller floats.
Although there are many different versions on the market, there are two main types of surface float – self-cocking controller floats and bubble floats. They are both as effective as each other. There are also homemade surface floats too, consisting of simple lengths of varnished dowel or peacock quill, that lie flat on the water. I call these flat float controllers.
FLAT FLOAT CONTROLLERS
These homemade floats are easy to create and when used they resemble twigs drifting on the surface. They make very little disturbance when they are cast and they are fairly well camouflaged – ideal for surface fishing. They do have their limitations though – because they are so light they cannot be cast very far and are therefore only useful for close range work.
They can be made from peacock quill, reed stems, bamboo strips or, better still, varnished 1/3 inch hardwood dowel – nice and cheap. I simply cut off various lengths, sand down the edges so they won’t damage the mainline and varnish them. They are locked onto the line using a couple of strips of thick silicone tubing and positioned 2-6ft away from the hook.
CONTROLLER FLOATS
These large and self-cocking floats are ideal for distances beyond 10 yards – some can quite easily be cast 50 yards if needs be.
My own Tenpin controller was developed after I tried to tempt a few carp basking some 35 yards out on my own lake, under some overhanging willows. I couldn’t quite get the distance needed to place a bait close to the carp, so after a little experimentation the very first self-cocking, extremely buoyant Tenpin controller was created.
There are many other similar style of controller floats available, but they all do one thing – they give you enough weight and control over your rig so you can present it right where you need it.
These floats need locking onto the mainline, 2-6ft from the hook, in one of three ways. Firstly I thread the line through the top-most eye of the controller, following that with a bead, then either use a swivel as a link between mainline and hooklength, or use a powergum stopknot, or simply tie the hooklength to the mainline using a four-turn water knot, but leave the tag ends long so the float cannot travel down the line to the hook.
BUBBLE FLOATS
These clear, plastic floats are about the size of a golf ball or chicken’s egg. They have two plugs that allow water to enter the float to give it some casting weight. You simply pull out the two plugs, immerse the float and allow water to pour in until you reach the desired level. Obviously you’ll need to leave some air inside the float so that ir remains afloat. Now insert the plugs again and you’re ready to fish.
These floats are attached to the line in one of two ways. The versions having two eyes are simply threaded onto the mainline and locked in place with a split shot or a swivel. The more advanced semi-fixed styles are locked in place by slipping the silicone sleeve over the mainline/hooklength swivel.
BAITS FOR SURFACE FISHING
There’s quite a few to choose from here – some are great as feed, others are better as hookbaits, while some can be used for both.
Good old Chum Mixer dog biscuits, bread and pop-up boilies are by far the most commonly used surface fishing baits. They can all be used as either feed or hookbait, and countless carp have been banked because of these three baits.
Other less common baits that make for great feed are cat biscuits, Rice Crispies, dry expander pellets, Corn Flakes and even popcorn. Marshmallows have been known to tempt a few carp off the top too, as have cork balls. They all have their place in the surface angler’s armoury because on their day they can all be useful.
HOOKING SURFACE BAITS
Because most surface baits are hard pellet-like baits, they can prove quite awkward to hook. Bread crust and marshmallows, on the other hand, are really easy – you simply push the hook through the crust or the outer skin and work it back through. Other harder baits have to be mounted differently…
Hair-rigging pop-up boilies is the best way, but you’ll need a good quality baiting needle to pass through the often rock hard boilies. When complete the bait should be as close to the hook as possible.
Dog biscuits can be hair-rigged also, but you will need to drill the baits first so you can pass your baiting needle through them. You can do that at home using a standard 2 or 3mm drill bit, or on the bank with a nut drill, available from most good tackle shops.
The easiest and just as effective way to hook Chum Mixers and any other large floating pellet is to use a bait band. These simply thread onto the shank or bend of your hook (it’s your choice as to where you want to position the bait) and then the bait is slipped inside the bait band. The band will offer enough grip to hold onto the bait through many casts, and there’s even a high chance that the bait band will still be attached to the hook after you’ve landed a fish.