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Written by Kelvin Allen
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Sunday, 03 August 2008 11:21 |
 DAYS AND NIGHTS WITH THE BREAM
I catch myself wondering now and again as to how many times I have baited up a bream swim, how many thousands of lobworms have been sacrificed, how many stones of greaves have been pound up and boiled, how many loaves of bread have been wasted, how many pounds of bran have been soaked up, how many miles have been tramped and how many hours have been put in. Since that day long ago when I caught my first bream in a fenland river. I look over the log book and I’m remembering the places where I have had my memories and rod bending moments where the keep net couldn’t be lifted, as I hit that magic ton. The list ranges over 30 years and comprises waters that stretch from King’s Lynn to Littleport over to the Nene. I should say that the total cost would be nearly enough to buy an old-age pension. But has the game been worth the hours of toil. l say it has, and I have never regretted the hundreds of hours spent and the piles of bait expended in my search for bream, but look upon the experiences as the brightest and most contemplative in my fishing career.
Bream are queer things generally speaking they are a summer and autumn fish, being very seldom seen in some waters during the winter, however in recent times fenland winter bream fishing has been excellent. The roach fisherman now and again lumps into a big bream that makes his roach pole creak, and sometimes walk off with part of his line. On the Ouse and kindred waters we very seldom see them until late in June, when they come to the surface in huge shoals, and swim backwards and forwards for a few days, until they settle down into their regular holes and haunts. Now and again during this period of their career they wander into strange places and get into considerable trouble. Shoals of them sometimes are in a 3-foot shallow and also get three-quarters of a mile up a backwater or a shallow drain, rooting like pigs in the sand and mud, where the water has not been more than a foot deep. Now and again threading a weed-bed in every direction, and colouring the water below them for yards so that other small fish are reaping a merry harvest.
This is a fatal time for the bream, time and again I have known huge bags to have been made while this roving instinct is so strong within them and as for baits at this season, I have known them to take anything, it did not matter much, the bream were not particular. But as soon as they settle down in their usual summer and autumn haunts they make up for the recklessness they displayed a little earlier and get cunning and crafty beyond their norm, sometimes refusing to feed for days at a stretch. I have sat hour after hour and not a movement of the float or tip and yet I knew that bream were there and in quantities as every now an then a huge fellow would roll up on the surface, his bronzy sides gleaming like gold and as if to put the finishing touches on this insult their broad fluked tail would rise above the surface and descend in a derisive farewell.
But I didn’t mind these demonstrations I could very patiently wait their good pleasure, because the fish were there and it was only a question of time as to when I should get a little of my own back. It is no good under these circumstances, shifting about to fresh swims. Keep on tickling the ground-bait in and fish all the evening till you cannot see the float, then get up in the morning before you can see to thread the line through the rings on the rod and fish all day and every day and the time comes it may be three days or it may be only three hours, but when the float rises and sails away you are in for some fun. You are all alert now, and fast and furious grows the fun. I have had twenty fish, going over 50lb in an hour. On one occasion I had two rods out and twelve times in succession I have had a big bream on each rod soon as one rod was laid down and the hook of the other baited away went the first and before it could be played a yard the other followed suit.
If seems strange that much of this still holds true on todays bream fishing, given this was first written over 100 years previous. Based on an extraction from: Fishing Days & Fishing Ways J.W Martin 1906
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 03 August 2008 10:50 )
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