Northern Coarse Angler

The Bream Machine – Feeder fishing for slabs

Last weekend the sun was finally starting to shine in the North West of England. However, a bitter north easterly was still whipping across Cheshire, bringing freezing cold winds from the Arctic. Any fisherman worth his salt will know that these bitter winds are not conducive to fishing. However, I know a place jammed full of bream, tench and crucian’s, Cicely Mill. Even the most incompetent angler like myself should stand a chance of catching them.

I believe it was Matt Hayes who said that the joy of catching bream doesn’t stem from the thrill of the fight but the precision involved catching them. Or words to that effect. He’s right too, catching a bream is akin to hooking a French man. That is  they give an initial burst of resistance followed immediately by complete and utter surrender. They are also very slimy. Because of this I would be fishing on light tackle – their uninspired fighting abilities I mean, not the fact they are similar to our cheese munching neighbours from across the channel.

I fished the feeder using my trusty old Shakespeare lightweight fishing rod and a cheapo Drennan match reel that set me back the princely sum of 10 pounds. This reel was loaded up with 4.5 pound line and fished in conjunction with a small in-line guru method feeder. In the colder months I tend to use a groundbait style method mix but as the weather is finally getting better I decided to use an age old groundbait mix. This consisted of bread, hemp seeds and sweetcorn. I used the juice from the corn and some brown sugar for some extra zing.  Traditionally, I would use abit of corn as the hook bait when fishing the feeder but I went and got all modern on y’all asses and used a piece of fake plastic corn on a hair rig.

There are two stages to successful feeder fishing. The first is to pick a good spot that is likely to hold fish. The second is to consistently hit that chosen spot with regular and accurate recasts to build up the swim. In this case it took around 2 hours of recasting every 20 mins before I started to get bites. But once they started they were a bite a chuck.

I went on to catch 5 bream average around 2-3 lbs with the biggest at 5 lb 2oz. Finally what you have all been waiting for – some pictures of me holding fish and also some pictures of fish laying on the ground.