Contents
Bream is found in almost all water bodies of the CIS countries, except for the most swampy, fast mountain rivers and salt waters. And in some it forms the basis of the fish fauna, if you look at the distribution of biomass among fish species. In both commercial and recreational fishing, it is of great importance. Catching bream on a feeder has its own secrets and nuances, having learned that you are guaranteed to stay with the catch!
For a feeder angler, bream is the fish that in most cases should be tuned in initially. After all, catching roach or bleak with a feeder is not a very interesting activity. Still, I want to get fish weighing 400 grams or more from the water, and classic feeder gear is not quite suitable for fishing these fish. Coming to an unfamiliar reservoir, about whose fauna nothing is known, you should immediately tune in to catching bream. After all, even if it is not there, other fish that lives there and is able to peck at the feeder will also fall. But if it is there, fishing will definitely be successful. Well, if the tackle is not suitable for him, then the capture of the bream will be more random, and the angler will lose most of the potential catch.
Bream feeder
The classic feeder is ideal for bream fishing, so when wondering which one is better to choose, you should give preference to the middle classic. All sorts of long-range and super-heavy tackle, bordering on sea fishing tackle and ultra-light pickers – all this, of course, can be caught. However, the most convenient and best suited for him is the classic feeder tackle.
What does she represent? As a rule, this rod is 3.6-3.9 meters long, consisting of four parts: three knees and one interchangeable tip. Occasionally you can see three-part feeders. They are less convenient when transporting, but show better casting characteristics, which makes fishing with them more comfortable. The classic rod is designed to work with feeder weights from 60 to 100 grams and casts up to 50 meters, which is quite suitable for those conditions where bream lives. It is necessary to choose a rod within these limits of the test.
The reel for bream fishing is also selected the most common. Its size should be 3000-5000, the permissible load on the clutch is at least 8 kg. This allows you to work with fairly heavy feeders and make long casts with them, as well as tear them out of the grass even with fish. It also avoids problems when fighting record trophies. However, a large bream does not deliver much resistance to the feeder when pulled out, and it makes no sense to buy a special powerful coil for it.
Definitely, when fishing for bream, you should use braided lines. They are suitable for fishing in currents and in still water, however, they allow you to make longer casts and improve bite registration. Braided lines can also be used, but in a limited area: when catching bream on a feeder in a pond or lake, where it walks for a short distance, or when fishing in still water for other types of fishing.
Since the bream can be caught successfully at not very long distances, a long cast is not required to catch it. Usually it can be caught in the coastal zone, especially in the summer, when it actively goes to the shallows and searches for food in large flocks. However, sometimes a long cast may be required. This happens while fishing in wide expanses of water with shallows. The bream often travels far from the shore, if its dumping into the water is small and even at a distance of 50-60 meters the depth is not more than a person’s height. In this case, you can use a shock leader and use the thinnest possible line to throw the feeder as far as possible. However, such fishing conditions are rather extreme and bream, albeit less effectively, can be caught much closer to the water’s edge.
For fishing, feeders of medium and large volume are used. Since the bream is a rather voracious schooling fish, only a large amount of food can keep it in one place, ensuring the success of fishing. It makes no sense to use all kinds of thimbles for fishing, especially in the current. There is also no point in quickly returning feed. For bream fishing, feeders of the “chebaryukovka” type with a plastic case and lead weight are suitable. They do not give up food so quickly, but they are able to deliver all of it to the bottom. This ensures a compact feeding spot and the stay of the flock in the same place. It is worth taking into account that a large feeder will require a large load when fishing in the current. A large load will allow her to quickly reach the bottom and keep well on it, and the larger the feeder, the larger the load should be.
Hooks for fishing use large enough. In most regions of the CIS, there are minimum sizes of fish caught. Considering them, it is worth using hooks of size from 12 to 10. The bream has lips of medium thickness, which can be cut well with smaller hooks, but the use of normal hooks allows you to avoid fish coming off due to poor hooking and partially get rid of small bites.
One of the features of fishing is a fairly long leash. Its length is taken from 40 cm or more. It is also related to the type of mounting that is being used. For paternoster, you can set the leash a little shorter, for inline – a little longer. By the way, paternoster is ideal for bream. If for some reason it does not suit you, you can use inline installation with a feeder on the outlet. However, other installations are also used, including an anti-twist, so popular with beginners.
The biggest stumbling block when fishing is the number of hooks. It is possible to equip the feeder with one or two hooks. It is known that two hooks increase the chance of a bite, though not by half. It also allows you to use two different nozzles. Fishing for bream on the feeder in the spring is usually accompanied by the selection of bait. At first, the fish takes better on animals, and closer to summer it switches to vegetable baits. By using both on different hooks, you can catch more. The chance of catching two fish at the same time is not excluded.
But opponents of two hooks think it’s unsportsmanlike. It is also prohibited by the rules of fishing competitions. Two hooks get confused a little more than one, they cling to the grass more in the summer.
However, equipping the feeder with a leash with two hooks when fishing for bream can be used and does not contradict the general rules of fishing. The author of the article believes that it is worth catching bream with a double-hook rig, even with a bait.
A few words should be said about winter fishing for bream on the feeder. In some reservoirs, where there are safe, but warm industrial water flows, this is possible. And given the recent warm winters, it is being practiced more and more widely. In a winter feeder, it is worth using a monofilament fishing line instead of a cord, since the air is still frozen, and the cord will freeze, as a result, it will quickly become unusable. You can use winter grease, but it will not give a 100% guarantee against freezing. In general, fishing in such conditions does not differ much from fishing in the summer, being limited only by the fishing water area and a lower intensity of bite than in the warm season. The same can be said about fishing in autumn, when the air temperature is negative, but the water has not yet frozen.
Lure
Many do not attach much importance to it, but in vain! Almost everywhere, it can decide the success of fishing in favor of the angler. And on many rivers, lakes and ponds, bream without bait is just an occasional trophy. This is a schooling fish that will not linger near a single worm, but is looking for places that can feed the whole flock. Therefore, for him it is necessary to set a very plentiful table.
Bait should have a smell, especially in the summer. The bream has a good sense of smell, and in summer it will be more suitable for odorous bait than for a plentiful nutrient table, but which does not have a strong smell. However, the unusual smell can scare away the fish. And if you are fishing in an unfamiliar place, it is better not to use too strong smelling flavors. For most of the places where the author has fished, anise, celery, strawberries, cinnamon will do. The latter, by the way, is able to exclude roach bites if you don’t want to catch it. But hemp smells, which everyone praises, for some reason completely cut off all the bites of bream. However, each body of water has its own flavors.
Nutrition and volume of bait is another important thing. A large amount of soil is mixed into the groundbait for starter feeding, just to provide a visible spot on the bottom where food can be found. The soil saves the bait from rapid extermination by small fish species. For the same purpose, a large fraction, porridge, is added to the bait. Porridge is suitable for barley and millet. It will practically not be of interest to roach, but the bream will immediately find the grains in the ground attractive and will begin to look for them, lingering for a long time in the place of fishing.
The animal component also works. As such, a small dung worm is well suited. They live at the bottom for a long time, move, attracting fish to the feeding spot. In this regard, they are better than maggots in that they quickly die under water and are motionless, and even more so than ice cream small bloodworms, which do not move at all. If possible, bloodworms can be used as an animal component, but not all anglers can afford to buy so many live bloodworms, especially in summer. In addition, the bloodworm will attract a lot of small fish to the place of fishing, giving a large number of bites of ruff, perch, and other weedy fish.
As already mentioned, you should make a big starting feed. It is produced by a special feeding trough, which is twice as large in volume. Its weight is usually not two, but three times more, especially in the current, in order to ensure the supply of food to the same place where the smaller feeder itself will be caught. The amount of feed thrown at once should be at least half a bucket. You can safely throw a whole bucket, if there is still a lot of bait. It is quite difficult to overfeed the bream, especially in the summer, and the flock will not leave after eating. On the contrary, most likely, another one will approach this place, and they will feed in a large pile.
In the process of fishing, a smaller weight of the feeder is used, which, when immersed, does not frighten the fish so much. The feeder should contain food, which is constantly thrown where the fish are. He already goes without soil, simply adding a nutrient component to where there was a spot of soil with food. Thus, the bream will always find something to profit from, and there will always be a chance of biting on a hook with a nozzle.
Nozzles for bream
The worm is the head of everything
It really is. Worm for bream – a universal nozzle for fishing on the feeder. It is suitable for fishing in early spring, and in autumn, and in the cold period, and in hot summer. Aquatic worms and the worms that an angler puts on a hook are very similar. In addition, worms from the soil very often fall into the water and serve as food for fish, especially during floods.
The worm is used for fishing most often dung. It can be distinguished by its red color with yellow rings and a strong smell. It is the smell that attracts bream to such a nozzle, in addition to everything, the worm is quite tenacious in the water. The leaf worm works a little worse. This one is red with no rings. It lives best in water, and with long intervals between bites, it will do better than dung.
Shura, or crawling out, is another type of worm that is used to catch bream. These worms are long, up to 40 cm, and almost a finger thick! To search for them, the fisherman has to walk around the garden at night with a flashlight and a shovel, since during the day they go to great depths and it is very difficult to dig them out of there. Shurov can be dug up in large quantities in the spring, when they are close enough to the surface, and then put in a bucket in a cold place and taken from there for fishing. They are put on a stitch of two hooks tied to a fishing line in series. They are used for catching trophy fish, almost 100% cutting off the bite of bream weighing less than 700 grams.
In the southern regions, a gray-green steppe worm lives, which is used by fishermen when catching bream on a feeder. However, the author did not catch on this. It is quite possible that this is a worthy replacement for shurs and dung worms.
Pearl barley
Bream are caught with a feeder and barley. It is especially good in cases where a large amount of barley porridge is added to the bait. Barley for fishing is prepared in the same way as for bait – it is well steamed in a thermos or put in a cast iron in the stove for the night. Porridge should be fluffy, soft. Grains – large volume, with shaggy edges. The better it is steamed, the more attractive it will be for fish. Sugar is added to the water to make the porridge taste sweet. This is very attractive to bream. Salt also works in some places, but the author did not try to catch salted porridge. You can add flavorings to the water when steaming porridge, but be careful.
They are put on hooks with a short forearm, 5-6 pieces each. It is very important that the grains cover the entire hook to the very knot. The sting is also closed, but not quite so that it barely sticks out. In this case, during cutting, it will dig into the lip, without meeting the resistance of the pierced barley. The iron near the nozzle scares the bream, this is checked, and the open sting with the fore-end too.
The grains are planted one at a time, for the middle part. There is a film of pearl barley. It is very strong, and the porridge on the hook will hold well. Pulling her off the hook will be almost impossible.
Manka and mastyrka
Two more classic nozzles for fishing with a feeder are semolina porridge and pea mastyrka. Both nozzles came from bottom and float fishing, they also have a place in the feeder. Mastyrka is prepared from peas and semolina porridge and has a denser consistency, semolina must be necessarily thin, otherwise the fish will pull it off the hook. The hook for catching mastyrka and semolina is used less than for worms and always with a short forearm.
Bloodworm, maggot
They are more related to sports nozzles, when there is not much point in catching bream. The bream is a fairly calm and peaceful fish, tolerating the presence of other fish next to it. Therefore, a flock of bream and roach can stand on the feeding spot. And the roach will take on bloodworms and maggots more often, because it is a more frisky fish and there are more of it. And large breams will not fall on the hook, not having time to approach, although they will feed nearby. And on these nozzles, a ruff takes, which lives in the same places as the bream, especially closer to autumn. Therefore, to put them or not is an individual question. They are suitable as a second nozzle on the second hook. But as the main one, it is better to use a large worm, pearl barley or semolina.
Time and place of fishing
Bream on the feeder, many are caught from spring to freezing. In most areas of the CIS there are restrictions on fishing during spawning. The best period is during the course of the bream to spawn from the pits, but this time is usually prohibited. However, later, during the end of the flood, bream is caught in reservoirs, rivers and lakes when it has finished spawning. This period is the second most active biting. Later, the bream is caught until autumn, its biting gradually fades, and by winter it is practically inactive.
For fishing in the summer, they select places where bream can feed. Usually on the river, he walks along the edge following the slope from the shore, looking for food in a flock. An edge is a flat section of the bottom that follows the slope to a depth. The flock moves along this route, eating everything in its path, but a good bait will help to delay it. Fishing on the edges goes well in the afternoon and in the morning, at dusk and at dawn – on the near ones, on the more distant ones, the bream bites more readily in the late afternoon and even at night. On the lake and the reservoir, bream is searched for in the shallows near the pits, from which it comes out to feed. If there are any flat areas near the depth, it is worth feeding them. Catching a scavenger is no different from this method.
In stagnant water, not the depth, but the nature of the bottom is of great importance for the bream. He likes to stand in fairly large areas where there are not many snags, there is some grass. However, the bottom likes shell. It stands on the shell due to the fact that you can rub your belly against it, freeing the intestines. It also sometimes stands on stones for the same reason, but the rocky bottom is not as rich in food as the shell area on the clay bottom. However, if you find a hard cartilaginous area among the silt, you can safely feed the fishing point there. Bream, with a high probability, will come there.
Bream can be found near large floating objects such as booms and moored barges. He is not afraid of them, unlike small fishing boats. The same can be said about the moorings, marinas, floodplains, footbridges. He likes to stand there in the summer heat, however, while his activity is less than at dawn. These places are often chosen by the bream as a day and night parking, coming out from under them at dawn and dusk to eat. Near such places it can be actively caught with a feeder.
In cold weather, bream is active where the water temperature is slightly higher. Usually, on sunny days in September, the bream stands on the shallows, where the water warms up to the bottom during the day. And in cold weather it descends to deep places where the water cools less, giving off heat from the surface. The bream leaves for winter apartments in November-December, when the average air temperature drops below 4-5 degrees, and the water near the surface becomes very cold.