ASK THE EXPERTS
Hi,
On my local water I am being plagued by small bream, I am fishing Cell pop-ups over 15mm bottom baits and, although I have spoken to the owner and he states “the bream activity will attract the carp”, I can’t help but feel that if the bream are taking my hookbait within five minutes of it hitting the bottom, what chance do the carp have of taking? And surely, if the carp were present they would push the skimmer bream out?
Can you please advise me on how to avoid the bream and hopefully land one of the resident 30lb mirrors?
Regards,
Matthew Scott.
Dear Matthew,
I can certainly relate to your problem as I’ve had the same headache on one or two waters I’ve fished over the years and it really can be a nightmare.
The first thing I would recommend is to use a bigger-sized boilie and step up to the 18mm Cell. Depending on the average size of the bream, this will hopefully stop a lot of the smaller ones picking up some of your freebies. If however, the bream are still a problem, my advice would be to buy some base mix rather than ready-rolled baits and either roll it yourself, or get it done by one of the many bait-rolling companies, and do them ‘large’ – 22 or 24mm is what I would go for. There aren't many bream about that are going to pick up those, that’s for sure!
Matthew - not a bream in sight, 18mm boilies all the way, another Frimley Pit 4 chunk
As for the pop-ups, I would prefer to go for a Snowman-type hookbait, an 18mm bottom bait and a 15mm pop will complement each other really well and also be a very big mouthful for the bream.
One other tactic I’ve used when I’ve had this problem is to fish with a lot of pellets somewhere else in my swim. I know it might sound a bit daft, but just try putting out a dozen or so spods of pellet away from your rigs, and top it up every couple of hours. I'm sure the bream find the pellet a lot more attractive and it will pull them in more quickly than the boilies and should also keep them grubbing around and give the carp more time to seek out your boilies.
As for a 30+, the best advice I can give you is to put in as much time as you can and if you're catching constantly it will only be a matter of time before one of the good 'uns finds its way into your landing net.
I hope this helps.
All the best,
Moggy
