Fooling finicky bream

As temperatures fall, bream become trickier to catch, often giving false indications when conventional groundbait feeders are being used. All is not lost though, as I’ve sussed out a way to fool these finicky fish with a simple pellet feeder rig.

1 CHANGING TIMES

I would usually be casting a ground bait feeder into this beautiful lake at Woodland Waters, just outside Grantham, Lincolnshire. But this time last year I started to get strange indications while using my favourite open-end feeder rigs for bream. The bites were ghostly, as the quivertip moved about slowly, but nothing was on the end of the line when I struck. However, I began to get an inkling of what was going on when I tried moving the feeder. After I had gently worked my rig in, so that my hook bait was over the loading that the feeder had just emptied, I started to get more positive bites, indicating that the crafty bream were only selecting bait that they thought had come from the feeder.

2 UNLEASHING A PELLET FEEDER

Apart from looking for an alternative to an open-end feeder, I wanted something that didn’t involve groundbait and chopped worm, which has a tendency to attract the hoards of small perch, roach and skimmers in this lake. I reasoned that if I could give the bream something that they liked in discrete quantities, I might manage to avoid small fish action.

I experimented by switching to a Method feeder, first with groundbait, then micro pellets, but sizeable carp quickly muscled in on this tactic. I then decided to try a medium-sized pellet feeder, cast out with a soft-actioned 10.5 ft feeder rod with a 1 oz quivertip and 8 lb reel line.

3 RIGGING RIGHT

To get my hook bait among or very close to my feed, I use a free-running 20 g pellet feeder with a small connector bead at the end of the reel line, to which I attach a 4 in. trace of 7 lb line, tied to a size 16 eyed hook.

An eyed hook pattern is very important with such a short hook length, because spade-end patterns tend to cut through the line when hooked fish buffer against the feeder.