13 Double-Figure Bream in Two hours

In 1995 I made my personal best catch of big bream, a catch that Angling Times described as the best catch of big bream ever taken. The smallest fish weighed a little over 10lb, and the largest 11lb 10oz. The catch also included a roach x bream hybrid of 6lb 12oz and two tench weighing 6lb 14oz and 7lb 2oz. All the fish were caught in a mad period of just two hours. This is how it happened.

I arrived at the water in the early evening, straight from picking up my bait at my local tackle shop. I was on one of my favourite Cheshire meres for a night session, fired up by the capture of a 13lb 14oz bream only three days previously, which I'd had the privilege to witness and photograph for Terry Knight. I didn't fish the same swim as Terry, but headed for a swim with similar, but more distinct features; a plateau that dropped from a mere 3ft deep to over 10ft. It was the same swim from which I'd taken a 10lb bream a week ago.

I spent almost two hours in the boat, plumbing the swim and choosing carefully where to place my marker. I wanted to fish down the slope with three rods, one legering near the top of the plateau in 6ft, one half way down in 8ft, and close to the bottom of the slope in 10ft. I placed my marker just beyond the swim so that it wouldn't interfere with any hooked fish. Once that was done I spread about 5lb dry weight of groundbait in the area. This groundbait was 40% fine white crumb, 40% fine brown crumb, 10% crushed hemp and 10% Van den Eynde 'Expo'. On top of that I scattered one pint of casters and half a pint of white maggots.

I tackled up with rods of my own design and manufactured by Harrisons, the Interceptor', threading them with 6lb Maxima line and terminating in a fixed paternoster rig. This rig has a short, 6in bomb length and a 3ft hook length of 4lb Berkeley Trilene XL. The hooks were Mustad Pro Specimen Bream 6's, and each was armed with a large lobworm, which has proven to be the killing bait for most of the bream taken from this water in the past three years.

It was an uneventful night, which was not surprising, for the heavens opened and it rained continuously from dusk until 4.30 the next morning. The only activity was a few line bites and the odd 'bite' from flying bats. I couldn't sink my lines out of the way of the bats for I would then have been pestered with line bites from fish crossing over the shallow plateau, which is a problem most of the time even with lots of line kept out of the water with the use of high rod rests. We've tried to bait for them many times but the fish that cross the plateau never seem to stop and feed.

I made a brew of tea at 4.30am, just as the rain stopped, and was ready for the first bite when it came at 4.45am. That resulted in a 6lb 12oz roach x bream hybrid, my second biggest, for I already hold the unofficial British record (so I'm told, but who really knows?) for that variety of hybrid at 8lb 12oz from another mere, a fish I caught in 1976. Then I had the second bite at 5.15am, a bream of 10lb 2oz, and was rubbing my hands with glee, for the conditions were perfect, and I anticipated a big catch. The mere had been threatening to throw up something really special for a long time. Would it be now, and for me?

At 6.45am I hadn't had another bite, not a line bite nor a mere twitch. I couldn't understand it. Especially since I had seen two bream, one that looked like a hybrid, and an unidentified fish, roll right over my baited area. I felt sure there were fish in my swim, and the more I thought about it the more I was convinced they were preoccupied with the casters I had put in the evening before. This so often happens with many species - they can become preoccupied with casters to the point of ignoring everything else. The same thing had happened when I had my 11lb 4oz Cheshire record tench a few weeks ago when for weeks previously they had been feeding confidently on sweetcorn and then caster produced the big one.

I had two choices. I could tie on smaller hooks and leger caster. Or do what I had been threatening to do for some time when the opportunity arose, which was to slip out quietly in the boat and float-fish casters for them. I remembered the time about 15 years ago when I was faced with a similar situation on another mere, when I float-fished casters over a ledge to take a catch of 16 bream over 8lb, and then 17 bream over 8lb in two four hour sessions, and then a 27 bream over 8lb catch in a six hour session, which included the first double from the water. So the decision was made - boat and float won the day.

I pushed the punt over the plateau until I was between two and three rod's length from the baited area, then lowered the mud-weights into the three foot depth. The beauty of the situation was that I was out of sight of the fish which fed down the slope (see diagram right). I had tackled up my 12ft 9in Interceptor Specimen Float Rod with 5lb Maxima main line to a 4lb Berkeley Trilene XL hook length. This terminated in a Kamasan 14's Wide Gape Specialist hook. I shotted the sliding bodied waggler with a 4 AAA bulk and a No.6 dropper 9ins from the hook. The depth of the stop-knot was set to fish the bait, four casters, at 10ft, and when I cast into the 10ft depth at the bottom of the slope I allowed the natural drift to take the tackle to the ledge and lay the line down the slope.

My first cast was at 6am and I ran out of bait at 7.30am, but carried on fishing till 8am. I never waited more than two minutes for a bite. As soon as the line lay down the slope the float slid away. The bream fought really well on the short line and my first action was to apply as much pressure as I dared to get the fish away from the shoal and onto the top of the plateau where I could play them out and net them with the least disturbance to the swim. I loose-fed little and often continuously, with the emphasis on 'little', for I had just half a pint each of caster and maggot. At first I was concerned that any returned fish would spook the shoal so I kept the first six bream and the hybrid in a pike tube and two keepsacks but returned the rest immediately after weighing. Luckily, they swam off along the plateau and not back to the shoal.

It may seem somewhat ungrateful to say it, but the fact remains that I was a little disappointed that out of 13 double-figure bream, there wasn't one over 12lb. This is a very special water and, believe me, the biggest at 11.10 is only a few ounces above average. There are (were?) bream in there that can make your eyes water.

All in all I'd had an excellent two seasons, for the previous year I caught the Cheshire county bream record from there with a fish of 14lb 1oz, and the same year I took the Cheshire tench record (from a different mere) with a beautiful tench of 11lb 4oz.

Locating River Pike

Graham with a Wye 20-pounder

There are two basic approaches to catching every species of fish. One approach is to choose a swim - based on your knowledge of the feeding habits of the species - set up your tackle, feed the swim, and wait for the fish to visit the swim (if they're not already there) and begin feeding. With this method you are hoping the fish will come to you. The second method is to adopt a roving approach, whereby you rove from swim to swim, again using your knowledge and experience of the species, and hope that at least one of the swims will hold your target fish. This method hinges on you going to the fish.

River pike can be caught using either of these two basic approaches just the same as any species of fish, but in my view a combination of the two is the best way.

For years I fished for river pike by default, in that my serious efforts were directed at roach, dace, chub or barbel, and a pike rod was stuck out ‘just in case’. If I caught a pike it was a welcome accident, for the only effort I put into its capture was to hang a bait on the hooks and leave it to fish for itself to one side of my swim. Usually the bait was a deadbait and the indicator an electric bite alarm. It was a set-up you could virtually ignore until the bite alarm sounded to let you know a pike had decided to oblige.

The Wye on a wet and windy day in winter

Eventually, I decided I would have days on the river when pike would be my primary target rather than an afterthought, and set out for the river armed only with pike rods and deadbaits, and occasionally caught livebaits when rules of the fishery permitted this.

When my chosen lengths of rivers were being used by few other anglers my approach was always the same: I would establish a base camp on a hot-spot, where all my tackle and bait would be left, then I would wander the river with one rod and a landing net, and fish every likely spot all along the length, fishing a free-roving live or dead bait. Then I would return to base, and fish a second rod, usually a legered deadbait, alongside the free-roving bait rod, in the hot-spot, for as long as it took me to have a fairly long and leisurely cup of coffee. Then the pattern of roving with one rod, etc, would begin all over again, with some variations of course, according to whatever happened along the way, ie, a missed run would obviously call for a longer visit in that swim to try for a another run.

For several years I was very successful, banking my fair share of fish to over 20lb.

Then a friend and I began to fish a stretch of the river Wye on a fairly regular basis, where we often used that well known technique of leap-frogging each other from swim to swim from the base camp, ie, my friend would pass me to fish the next swim, then I would pass him to fish the next swim, ad infinitum. That is, we used the leap-frog technique when there were no other anglers along the bank we were fishing, which was the case about 50 per cent of the time. When there were other anglers around we would choose a known hot-spot each and fish one rod on a free-roving livebait (or with a suspended and anchored livebait) and one rod on a legered deadbait.

We caught a lot of pike from the length, which was almost a mile long, with fish falling to both the static and roving approach. It was a very prolific pike stretch, holding far more pike than I would have thought possible and yet still grow them to over 20lbs.  There was a great range of sizes, from jacks, through all the doubles, to the biggest, which was supposed to be about 30lb, although the stories varied according to how long they had been passed along the grapevine. I shouldn’t really have been surprised at the large volume of quality pike along the stretch, however, for there are several big shoals of bite-size roach along there, and without exception, wherever I’ve come across good shoals of roach - and pike have been present at all - they were present in both quantity and quality.

So on this mile-long stretch of river we accumulated a fair amount of experience in both the roving approach, and the static approach for pike. Three things, above all else, became very clear, at least as far as this stretch of the Wye is concerned.

1.  The bigger pike have a distinct preference for certain quite limited areas, and can very often be found in a specific swim.
2.  The roving approach was best when the pike were not too inclined to feed and, therefore, not inclined to go in search of food.
3.    On those days when they were well on feed the bigger pike moved out of their favoured areas and hunted along almost the whole extent of the stretch and perhaps even further.

What this meant in practical fishing terms was that, once we knew if it was going to be a ‘good’ day, or a ‘bad’ day, we could fish in the most productive approach for that day. It was such a prolific stretch for pike we could tell within an hour or so just what kind of day it was going to be. To give you an idea, it was not unusual for two of us to catch 15 - 20 pike, most of them doubles, and at least one ‘20’, in the course of a ‘good’ day.

This is the beauty of being able to fish a length of river (or drain and canal) that holds a great many pike, for even on poor days it is possible to catch an odd fish or two and therefore more easily establish the feeding pattern of the pike.

We knew, for instance, that on a good day, when there were other anglers on the water, that if we fished within 50yds of a swim where a big pike had been caught in the past, we would have a good chance of catching that pike, sometime that day, during the course of its hunting foray. The closer we could get to the swim it apparently resided in, the better our chances of catching it. But some known fish were caught, as I said, up to a mile from their ‘homes’.

What we didn’t find any evidence of was the hot-spot, or lair theory. That red hot, but comparatively small area where the vast majority of the pike along the length are taken from. But perhaps this particular length of the Wye was one big lair, for each end of the stretch had fast, very shallow water that was totally unsuitable for pike and their favourite prey, roach.

But as for the question of which is best, a roving or static approach when pike fishing, the answer has to be, at least as far as a prolific stretch of river is concerned, that it depends on the day. When they’re well on feed, fish as close as you can to a known hot-spot and stay put. When they’re being difficult, go for the roving approach.

But the approach we enjoyed most of all, and which gave us the most success, was to establish a base camp, fish a legered sea fish deadbait set-up on one rod, and a legered livebait on the other rod, fairly close together, then take it in turns to wander off with another rod, fishing a suspended live or deadbait in all the known pike swims along the stretch. That way we had the best of both worlds, and also the best way of learning about the movements of the pike, their preferences as far as type of bait and the most productive method of presentation (which was not always the same on every visit).

Briefly, it worked out that live roach, fished suspended under a float, no more than a foot off bottom, and allowed to swim as close as possible to the snaggy lairs the pike lurked in, was without doubt the most killing technique for all sizes of pike. A legered live or dead roach, popped up off the bottom or lay on it, was the next best method for numbers of pike. And the most selective method for the bigger pike, but caught by far the fewest fish, was a legered sardine.

On less prolific waters it can take years to reach even tentative conclusions, and there is a danger that what we learned on the Wye  - or some of it anyhow - could be misleading anywhere else. But it has worked out so far that the patterns that were established on the Wye are very similar to, and in some cases exactly the same, as the patterns established in the past, and coming to light at present, on other waters.

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Barney Bags a Big Barbel

It was just my luck. I'd arranged to go barbel fishing on the river Dove with Gary Knowles, known to friends and enemies alike as Barney - and various other names, mainly to do with gas emissions. And then my youngest granddaughter Maisie went down with chicken pox, which meant we had to babysit (including me, as my wife can't drive).

It was bad enough not being able to go, but when Barney sent me a text to say he'd had a 12-pounder (12lb 4oz) it didn't help at all. Incidentally, I sent him my usual text reply to congratulate him. It's always one word - "TWAT"!, or sometimes "TWAAAAT!" - and he loves it!

Anyway, I've got my fingers crossed for next week now when we'll have another go for those barbs.

I haven't fished the Dove this new season yet, but I've been told it's the best opening to a new season for barbel on the Dove for many a year. About time too, for we've had quite a few years when the opening weeks have been absolute crap.

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