Packed with expert advice from top anglers to catch you more
The England star reveals why big floats and heavy kit have no place in his armoury when it comes to catching a net of slabs from these waters
AFTER doing a lot of fishing for bream and skimmers on big canals, both at home and abroad with England, I’ve concluded that the way we were brought up to fish for them all those years ago probably wasn’t right!
Back then, it was all about fishing a big float, putting lots of line on the bottom and regularly feeding to keep the bream happy – increasingly, though, I’m finding that the complete opposite is best. In fact, my approach on places like the Gloucester Canal is now closer to the way you’d fish for small roach. Much lighter 1g floats, small hooks and careful feeding all add up to a lot more bites.
I’ve made plenty of adjustments over the years, and believe that the 10 tactical elements listed here are important if you are to succeed at this style of fishing.
1 ATTACK ONE SPOT
When targeting bream, I like to create one spot and one spot only to fish over, so I won’t have any other lines on the go. This will be in the deepest part of the canal, and on many of our big shipping canals that’s around 13m out, where you could be looking at between 12ft and 15ft of water. On this spot I will aim to keep the rig totally still, but if there is some tow on the water, it can be worth allowing the rig to drift off to one side with this movement, just to see if it triggers a bite.
2 LIGHT FLOATS RULE
Think of targeting bream in deep water on the pole, and you’d automatically envisage fishing with a big 2g-3g float.
In some instances, that’s correct, but from what I’ve learned, the lighter you can fish, the better your results will be. You want to be fishing almost in the way you would when after roach.
This is because if you fish too heavy, and put too much line on the bottom, it just doesn’t work.
Precisely why this is I don’t really know, but what I do know is that a lighter float works miles better than a heavy one in many situations.
My favourite pattern of float is a Daiwa Perfect Gloucester, with a loading of between 1g and 1.5g. This has a long wire stem, rugby ball-shaped body and an easy-to-see bristle, which makes it the perfect bream float for deep water.
The shotting is kept simple, with a bulk of No8 for floats up to 1g, or an olivette for bigger versions, set 38cm from the hooklength loop. Between this go two No8 or No9 droppers, spaced equally apart.
3 TERMINAL TACKLE SCALE DOWN YOUR
Bream aren’t famed for their fighting abilities and, in deep water, you can scale down your kit. My mainline is 0.14mm Daiwa Tournament Rig Line to 6ins of 0.10mm Daiwa Tournament Flu
