Cold-Water Bream It's All About Worms!

Steve takes us to his favourite venue to reveal how he catches big weights.

REGULAR readers of this column will know that my favourite fish has always been the bream. What they might not know is that I don’t just fish for them in the summer!

Whenever there’s a bit of colour in the water at venues like Ferry Meadows, where I am today, I find bream can be caught, even in the winter. 

There are a few key things you need to get right. The first, and perhaps the most important, is location. 

When the weather is as cold as it is now you’ll find that bream tend to drop into deeper water, so it makes sense to spend some time finding the deeper part of your swim and targeting the fish there.

You also have to get your tactics right, and for me there’s one bait which holds the key to bream in winter – worms!

Quite simply, bream love them.

CASTERS ARE A MUST TOO

For a five-hour session I want at least half-a-kilo of small dendrobaenas. On top of that I wouldn’t ever go bream fishing without casters – big bream love them, and in Ferry Meadows the bream are big! I always have a few dead maggots with me too, but while I will feed a few they are primarily there just to give me another hookbait option.

I always like to feed a few wetted-down 2mm coarse pellets as well, as they hold bream in a swim very well.

As a groundbait mix for bream I stick to my tried and trusted 50- 50 blend of Ringers Original Bag Up mix and Ringers Dark, which has caught me more bream than anything else.