Feeder Fishing Tips - Knowing the depth on the bomb or feeder - Mick Vials
A rule of thumb states that a 1oz leger bomb will sink around 2ft 6ins for every second you count, so a count of eight means that point you’ve cast to is around 20ft deep. The trick is to start short at, say, 30 yards, then work your way out by a few yards at a time.This way, you will soon work out the contours of the lake and identify where it is shallower, where it deepens off and where there are any ledges or plateaux.
I believe it’s not so important to find the depth, more to find how the bottom of the lake varies and where the fish will be.
To get a count, I clip up on my reel, cast the bomb to the clip then, with the quivertip still bent, begin counting as soon as the bomb hits the water. When the tip springs back slack the bomb has hit bottom and you can stop the count.
A rule of thumb states that a 1oz leger bomb will sink around 2ft 6ins for every second you count
How to catch a net of bream
March and April are historically the months when bream and tench really begin to feed in earnest.
The pages of Angling Times are filled with massive single fish or big nets of smaller specimens, and already bream have begun to figure heavily in readers’ catches. Every day that passes means longer daylight hours, combined with the clocks going forward at the weekend, and that means more sunshine and warmer water temperatures.
Combine this with preparations for spawning and it’s no wonder that early-spring is seen as a bit of a bonanza for catching bream. The feeder remains king of them all for catching a net of bream on natural waters, so if you’re a bit rusty when it comes to fishing the tip, here are six essential bits of advice to help you get stuck into a shoal of slimy slabs!
Step 1) Choose the right feeder!
Gone are the days of using a standard open-end feeder for bream if you want to cast a long way. A small open-end or cage is fine for a 30-yard chuck, but if you need to cast further then look to invest in some of the modern rocket or distance feeders (below) on the market.
These are wire cage feeder swith the weight built into one end. They cast smoothly in the wind and will fly a long way. What size you pick depends on how far you need to go, and the conditions, but don’t force the cast – it should be a comfortable one to ensure accuracy.
Step 2) Go the distance
The water will still be a little clear and that means the chances of catching bream at shorter ranges are slim. You need a decent cast of upwards of 50yds to find the fish.
In open water this should put you in a decent depth but it’s worth counting how long it takes the feeder to hit bottom so you can work out how deep the swim is. As a guide, every second that it takes to get down equates to around a foot of water if using a standard 30g feeder. Around 6ft should be the minimum depth you’re looking for.
Step 3) Try using braid
The water will still be a little clear and that means the chances of catching bream at shorter ranges are slim. You need a decent cast of upwards of 50yds to find the fish.
In open water this should put you in a decent depth but it’s worth counting how long it takes the feeder to hit bottom so you can work out how deep the swim is. As a guide, every second that it takes to get down equates to around a foot of water if using a standard 30g feeder. Around 6ft should be the minimum depth you’re looking for.
Step 4) Pick the right groundbait
Whether you use a fishmeal mix or a sweet one will depend on the venue you are fishing, as some waters respond to fish while on others it can be a turn off.
If you are unsure, go down the classic route with a sweet mix combined with brown crumb. On waters where fishmeal works, a 50/50 blend of fishmeal and sweet will do the job. Mix this on the damp side so it stays in the feeder on the cast, but riddle it off to ensure no large lumps are left when it’s time to fish. It is also worth including some dark groundbait somewhere along the line in clearish water.
Step 5) Give them lots of goodies
Although we’re not yet at the time of year when loading a feeder with chopped worm and caster will work, you still have to make sure that some freebies are included in the groundbait mix in order to keep the bream feeding actively. Chopped worm and caster remains number one, but remember to chop the worm quite finely to release as much scent into the water as you can.
Micro pellets are another good addition on waters that see a lot of pellets used. If this isn’t the case, then dead maggots are a good substitute and a few grains of corn won’t do any harm. For the hook, two or three dead maggots will let you feel your way in, but worm will always pick out the bigger bream.
Step 6) Patience pays
You rarely catch bream immediately even in the height of summer, so this is definitely the case in March and April, when the fish aren’t fully in the feeding groove.
It’s reckoned that no bites in the opening hour of a session is a good thing, as this will allow you to build up a feed area without spooking any fish by catching them too early. However, if you get two hours into the day and haven’t caught it’s time to rethink the plan.
Casting further can work, as can the odd cast closer to you. A great trick is to chop some worms into a mush and pile these into the swim, relying on the scent cloud to attract a few bream into the area.
How to get early season feeder success!
With the rivers closed, it’s now time to start looking at commercial waters to get your fishing fix – and there’s no better way to keep the bites coming than by fishing the feeder.
Whichever model you use, the swimfeeder is simple to fish with relatively easy rigs, and deadly accurate in terms of placing your hookbait right next to a small pile of feed at up to 60 yards range.
It’s a little early in the year to bank on catching consistently on the pole or waggler, and you can even use the same rod and reel that’s served you so well on the rivers in the past few months. Here are six things to master if you’re planning a session on the swimfeeder over the coming weeks…
1) Choose the right feeder
This is the first consideration when deciding to fish the feeder. A feeder is ideal for when the fish want a bit of bait to get stuck into, but don’t go too mad by picking a big feeder that holds a lot of pellets right now.
Minimal feed will still be best, so that means picking a smallish feeder that’ll drop just a good pinch of bait into the peg on every cast. Method or pellet feeders are both good but the Hybrid feeder from Guru has won over lots of anglers in recent years.
If the water is cold and clear, try changing from feeder to bomb from time to time. The bomb will offer minimal disturbance in the peg while giving you the option to fish a large, highly visible hookbait around minimal feed.
2) Find where the fish are
Depending on the swim, you’ll be faced with several options as to where to fish. The swim could have an island, a far bank, overhanging trees or lily pads that are just beginning to establish themselves again after winter.
All will attract and hold fish, so if your swim has any feature, cast to it. However, don’t be tempted into casting tight up to this feature, as often the water there will be very shallow.
Instead, aim to land the feeder a metre or so away, where the water will be a little deeper. In open water, make the cast to a range that you can comfortably reach and, if that is your plan, where you can feed over the top with a catapult.
3) Use bright baits
Changing hookbaits can be the key to cracking a commercial in early March, as the water will still be a little on the clear side and the fish not yet in full-on feeding mode.
Tried and tested favourites such as hard pellets and dead maggots work brilliantly for smaller fish but colour plays a big part, giving the fish a hookbait that they can easily pick out from a small patch of pellets or groundbait.
Corn is brilliant, but if you want to go down the boilie route a bright yellow, green or pink mini pop-up, dumbell or wafter-type bait can really trigger a response.
4) Feed over the top
You don’t always have to rely on the feed that’s going into the swim via the feeder to keep the fish happy. Loosefeeding pellets over the top of where you’re casting to can pay dividends too.
This is a popular ploy when bomb fishing too, introducing half-a-dozen 6mm or 8mm hard pellets over the top via a catapult every few minutes. This way you can regulate how much feed is going into the peg and work out how the fish are responding to it.
5) Use light hooks and lines
Although spring is just about here, that doesn’t mean that you should switch back to heavy lines and big hooks on a mixed fishery. Erring on the light side will get more bites over five or six hours of fishing, but a balance needs to be struck – go too light and you may get broken by a big fish, whereas too heavy and the fishing will be patchy.
For a typical mixed commercial water when F1s, skimmers and the odd better carp are likely, a hooklink of around 0.12mm matched to 5lb mainline and a size 16 or 18 barbless carp-style hook makes for a balanced set-up. Only if the peg is snaggy or the fish particularly big should you think about stepping up to heavier tackle.
6) Time your casts
With any form of feeder fishing, a big puzzle to solve is how long to leave the feeder out before recasting. On natural waters for bream, or when in search of big carp, this can be up to half-an-hour, but if you are fishing a heavily-stocked commercial water that’s home to small carp, F1s, skimmers, tench and barbel, you can reasonably expect to get bites fairly regularly. You should be aiming to build a swim up over time to create a small area for the fish to feed over.
Casting every five minutes will quickly establish feed on the deck, and if you are using small baits such as maggots and 4mm pellets you should catch within this five-minute window. Only if you change to a bigger bait in search of something that pulls back harder should you leave the rig out that bit longer.
Fishing for skimmer bream in deep rivers with Mark Pollard
We’ve had a funny winter as far as fishing on rivers is concerned, with no real floods and the extra water that comes with it, combined with short spells of mild and then freezing cold weather that adds up to testing conditions for the angler and a less than enthusiastic response from the fish!
Roach in particular have some weeks been ten a penny and then absent a few days later but one fish that’s always willing to have a go, even in clear, cold water is the skimmer. On some venues they’re a bonus but on others, they are your main weight-building fish and can give you 15lb to 20lb in a match – provided you fish correctly for them of course.
Winter skimmer fishing on a river is nothing like summer when you can bosh the bait in and fish very positively with rigs and big baits. Scaling down is needed and a different approach to how you feed must be adopted 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 as opposed to introducing a big bed of bait and fishing over this all-day.
The River Ouse through Ely Town Centre is stacked with skimmers and although it isn’t a match venue as such, it bears a strong resemblance to many deep, slow flowing town centre venues that are popular in winter. With over 15ft of water on the pole line and a variable flow, it certainly isn’t a river for fishing on auto pilot as can happen when going after skimmers in warmer weather!
Pole V feeder
The first thing to consider is whether to fish the pole or feeder? You’ll catch on both of course and is such deep water, it can be tempting to pick up the rod but taking on 15ft-plus isn’t as hard as it seems provided your rig is heavy enough and the groundbait mix is stiff enough to get straight to the bottom. The pole also offers far superior presentation, allowing me to cover more of the swim and inch the float through the peg gently, tempting the fish into taking the bait. In contrast, the feeder only lets you fish the hookbait in one spot and I think you miss out on a lot of baits my limiting yourself this way.
Finding the right spot
I wouldn’t bother messing about with fishing on a shelf or a slope in winter. Bream and skimmers always prefer a flat bottom in the maximum depth and at Ely, there are two shelves before you find the main depth. I then fish just past this final shelf where the flow is at its steadiest.
Floats - go as light as possible
So in deep water, you think it’d be right to fish a big float, say of around 3g but that’s actually not the case! I’m a big fan of fishing as light as I can get away with because I think this not only produces better presentation and offers less resistance to a fish when holding the rig still but you also miss fewer bites than using a heavier float. So in my Ely peg, which has a reasonable flow, that means a 2g MP Roach using an olivette and four No 11 droppers underneath strung out to cover the final few feet of the swim. If the river was flowing more slowly, I may even consider dropping down to a 1g float.
How far overdepth?
River bream fishing does involve setting the rig overdepth but not massively in winter when bites can be very shy. I’ll plumb up and then slide the float a couple of inches up the line and that’s about it. This then allows me to inch the rig through the peg without it dragging under every time. If I was wanting to go any more overdepth, then I would be essentially aiming to hold the float dead still and I think you’d be better off fishing the feeder or a pole feeder in this instance.
Canal-style hooks
There’s a bit of a nod to canal fishing with my hooks, lines and elastics and the first element is the hook, a Kamasan B511 in size 16. This is a superbly fine, light hook that’s still capable of landing a bonus perch or bream and provided that the pole elastic is soft enough, there will be no dramas from bumped fish or bent hooks! I rig up a No 6 Matrix Solid elastic through the top three of the pole and set it soft so that plenty comes out and it acts as a great shock absorber. Likewise, line is 0.14mm Matrix Power Micron to a hooklink of the same material in 0.10mm. Using a big float doesn’t mean that you have to use big hooks and thick lines too! I then have around 1.5m of line between float and pole tip to let me run the float down the peg when needed.
Cup in – don’t ball it!
Let’s look at groundbait now, perhaps the most important part of any type of skimmer fishing. Before I explain the mix, I think it is important to impress that cupping the balls of feed in rather than throwing them is vital. 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 of the groundbait ends up and from this I can then work around the area, either holding the rig tight on top of it or running it below or above the spot.
The magic skimmer mix
Now onto the mix. This needs to be heavy enough to go straight to the bottom in 15ft of water and I go for Dynamite Baits Frenzied Hemp Black, Silver X Roach and brown crumb in a ratio of one part Hemp Black to half a part of the other two mixes. The finished groundbait is not mega sticky to the touch but if mixed wet enough, will hold together and go straight down. To this I add a smattering of casters, dead pinkies and hemp, which skimmers love. Hookbait is simply double dead red maggot with one hooked through the flat end and the other through the pointed end.
When to top up
At the start I will pot in five balls of groundbait and from there I see how the fish respond. When the bites fade I will pop in another ball of 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 for a match. What I have found in winter is that you get an initial flurry of bites from that opening hit of bait before it then goes dead. The fish are still there but they’re not feeding with any amount of positivity. You 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.
Work out how the fish want it
Hold the rig still or run it through? There’s no definitive answer to this and it can change from day to day. I begin by inching the rig over the groundbait area very slowly at around half the pace of the flow as this tells me immediately where the fish are in the peg – they could on top of the feed or well below it. If I catch on top of the feed then the sensible thing to do is hold the rig back on top of it but if I get a few fish below the feed area, then running will be best.
Don’t wait for the float to bury
I leave all of the float bristle on show so that I can drag a bit of line overdepth but when the water is cold, bites are never full-blooded affairs. The only indication you may get will look more like something from a little roach – they’re not though! Skimmers can be very, very shy and often with the set-up I use, the float will lift a little and then the tip sinks a fraction. Either strike at this or if holding the rig still, let the rig go slack and run for a few inches before striking as this allows the fish to get hold of the bait confidently.
Fish with Polly!
If you fancy brushing up on a bit of canal roach fishing or perhaps learning a completely new method, Mark offers fishing days on a range of venues. From group sessions to one to one coaching, birthdays or corporate days, he can offer the lot on any type of venue and any method. Bait is supplies – all you need to bring is your kit!
To book a day with Mark, give him a call on 07557 052053 or e-mail him at info@markpollardfishingdays.com and he will be in touch. Check out his website at http://www.markpollardfishingdays.com/ for more information.
Go for bream on a coloured river with Darren Cox
Rain can sometimes be the match angler’s best friend when rivers are low and clear and in desperate need of freshening up but on the flip side, a downpour can wreck a well-honed match plan overnight, ruining a perfect-looking river in hours and producing blanks aplenty.
I’ve been there plenty of times, fishing matches where one fish could win and a bite, let alone something in the net is worth shouting about! However, on the right venue, heavy rain that changes the game can actually present a match-winning opportunity, especially if there are bream and barbel about.
My local Warks Avon around Stratford is a prime example of this. On a normal day I would expect to be fishing for roach and chub but when the rain comes down and the river rises and colours up, these two species vanish. They’re replaced instead by skimmers, hybrids, bream and if you’re lucky a barbel. Changing your plans and of course fishing the right areas in the first place can actually produce better fishing than if the river was in perfect nick.
You’ve got a good peg - what now?
If you are lucky enough to get on a bream peg, the job is still far from done and even before you unzip the rod bag, the first consideration is where to fish in the peg. I look straight away for any large amount of slack water, whether that is caused by a bay or water running off of a bend. The point where a river opens out from narrows is also a guaranteed bream area.
The swim I’m fishing on the Avon has just that, slack water close to the far bank created by a slight bend and I know from experience that there’s also a silt bed here. This silt will be full of natural food like bloodworm and bream won’t move far from here. To find a silty bottom, cast a feeder or bomb out and wind it slowly back across the riverbed. Resistance caused by the lead digging into the silt tells you that you have found what you’re looking for.
The feeder is king
Rod and line is the only option for tackling a slack at range and the waggler just won’t present the bait still enough so it’ll be an out and out feeder job.
My rig for a river like the Avon is nothing special, made up of the feeder running on the mainline that has a short four inch twizzled length above the hooklink, which creates a bit of a semi bolt rig effect. Mainline is reliable old 6lb Maxima, the feeder being a 30g Garbolino wire cage. Hooklink is 2.5ft or 3ft of 0.16mm Garbo Line, this length putting the bait ell downstream of the feeder which is where you often find bigger bream sat below the feed picking off particles.
That only leaves the hook to pick and I can’t fault a size 13 Kamasan B711. All of this sounds like powerful kit for bream fishing but in coloured water I honestly think that the fish are not wary of big hooks and big baits. I also don’t want to lose what I hook!
Cage or plastic feeder?
I prefer a cage feeder over a plastic model as they empty quicker but also don’t flex in flowing water as a plastic feeder can, which gives false indications on the tip. A wire cage feeder also adds more overall weight to hold bottom, doing away with the need for add-on weights. Around 30g is ample to hold bottom in a slack so long as you have the rod pointed up in the air keeping as much line as possible off the surface where the strongest flow is.
Add some fishmeal
With colour in the water, bream will feed my scent and not eyesight so a groundbait to go in the feeder needs something powerful to stop them and that means fishmeal. I’ll mix up a ‘normal’ bream blend of Sensas Lake and Feeder but also add a good helping of Bait-Tech Marine Halibut Mix. If the river was low and clear though, the Halibut would go as I’d expect to catch roach, dace, chub and perch as well as bream. Not in water the colour of tea though! This is mixed relatively dry to empty out of the feeder quickly.
Packed with goodness
Keeping with the positive theme, I try and cram each feederful with as many particles as I can if I draw on some bream. That’s simply casters, chopped worm and dead maggots that lace the groundbait because a 5lb bream can demolish a feeder of bait in one go. Imagine this happening with a dozen fish in the area and you can see how much feed needs to go in.
Too many anglers put an initial hit of feed in, catch a few and then stop getting bites. They then sit and wait, hoping that the bream have backed off and will return but on a coloured river, the reason is more likely to be that there’s no food left! You have to be attacking.
On the hook
Nothing can beat worms on a coloured river and while a dendra or lobworm tail are good, I swear by two large redworms tipped with a dead red maggot. Redworms wriggle like mad and a bream can pick them out far quicker than three dead maggots.
Keep the bait going in
I’ll cast every five minutes even if I’m not getting bites to keep the bait going in on a regular basis as you have to be positive. Clipping up and aiming to a far bank marker will put the feeder in the right place each time.
If I cast and get a knock on the tip immediately then this tells me that the fish are not backing off and that they want the feed so you need to try and read the timing of the bite, if I am left waiting five minutes for an indication then the fish could be backing off.
That’s a bite!
With the rod up in the air, a bite from a bream will either be a big drop back as they move the feeder or a couple of taps on the tip followed by a positive pull. The key is to make sure that the fish is on and that means not striking too early. Always let the bite develop fully.
Kicking off
Six feeders of bait go in at the start and I would expect indications quickly. If nothing happens after half an hour but I am getting small fish knocks then this tells me more bait needs to go in so out goes another six feederfuls. If nothing is happening at all then it will be a bit of a waiting game so you’ll need to leave the feeder out for longer and wait. Provided you have drawn a bream peg and conditions are right, there’s no reason why they won’t feed.