How to catch more river bream
With the rivers finally being coloured, it's now one of the best times to go out and land yourself some river bream. Below are some of the best tips from Mark Pollard to help you catch more bream when you next go out.
Warmer water and reduced visibility spurs this fish into having a go but winter bream fishing on a river is nothing like in summer, when you can bosh the bait in and fish very positively. .
You must scale down and adopt a different approach to your feeding, but you’ll still need a fair bit of groundbait. The idea is to tempt the fish into having a go every time you feed, rather than introduce a big bed of bait and fish over this all day.
Groundbaiting isn’t as simple as throwing in a dozen balls and emptying the place!
Find the right swim
I wouldn’t bother messing about with fishing on a shelf or a slope in winter. Bream and skimmers prefer a flat bottom at the maximum depth.
If your swim has a shelf close in, than fishing a few metres past this where the flow is at its steadiest should be ideal.
Go light on floats
Even in deep water I’m a big fan of fishing as light as I can. This leads to better presentation and offers less resistance to a fish when holding the rig still, and you will miss fewer bites than with a heavier float.
So, in 10ft of water with a reasonable flow, a 2g MP Roach using an olivette and four No11 droppers strung out underneath it to cover the final few feet of the swim is perfect.
If the river is flowing more slowly, I may even consider dropping down to a 1g float.
How far overdepth?
River bream fishing in winter doesn’t involve setting the rig massively overdepth, as bites can be very shy. I’ll plumb up, then slide the float a couple of inches up the line – that’s about it. This allows me to inch the rig through the peg without it dragging under.
If I was wanting to go any further overdepth I would essentially be aiming to hold the float dead still. In this instance I think you’d be better off fishing a feeder or a pole feeder instead.
Cup in... don’t ball it!
Perhaps the most important element of any type of skimmer fishing is feeding, and in coloured water this always involves groundbait. You need to cup the balls of feed in rather than throw them. Throw several balls in and you cannot say with any certainty how accurate you have been.
This is fine in summer but not on a cold winter’s day. My aim is to create one spot where all the groundbait ends up. From this I can work around the area, holding the rig tight on top of it or running it below or above the spot.
When to top up
At the start of a session I will pot in five balls of groundbait, and from there I can see how the fish will respond.
When the bites fade I will pop in another ball or, if nothing is happening, another goes in after 20 minutes and this then sets the pattern. You can get through a lot of groundbait this way, so I mix up at least three kilos. What I have found in winter is that you’ll get an initial flurry of bites from that opening hit of bait, then it goes dead. The fish are still there but they’re not feeding with any degree of positivity. You’ll need to give them another ball to get a few of them to move back over the feed area and have a go.
Typically, you can expect to catch two or three skimmers or get half-a dozen indications before you need to feed again.