So after a bit of a late start I headed back out to Lodge in the hope of some bream. Got there, got half my kit out to discover in my rush to leave the house I hads forgotten both my landing nets and my unhooking mat.. So I packed everything up again and headed to Borden Angling Centre for the necessary items, getting myself a useful folding trout net for later in the season, so not all bad. Back to Lodge and the far right swim by the dam was free on the nearside, so plumped for that as it was now nearly midday and would save the walk round. I lobbed a method out to the dam on the quiver and fished a float in front of me next to some lillies.
Caught a small roach on the method straight away but then it was fairly quiet. I'm very pleased with my new John Wilson avon / quiver rod, plenty of power, perfectly balanced, great finish and really doo bite indication on the quiver. On the float I was straight into small roach and gudgeon on maggots so changed to corn for some slight better sized roach and skimmers. This went on for a while, but the float wasn't looking as though it would produce anything useful and fishing an inline elasticated method on a quiver I decided probably wasn't the best approach for bream. On top of this, I found the lake to be much shallower on the nearside, I had a hunch the bream would be further out.
So I set up a carp rod with the remaining reel I had, fishing 30g method, but this time running, to a size eight hook with a hair rigged 10mm boilie - hoping to get into some bigger bream. Having eventually found a place I could get a rod rest in the ground just off the hard packed gravel, I fired the method out a good 40 - 50% away across the lake and set it up running, with freespool on and a bobbin. Meanwhile I sacked the float rod and set the quiver up with a maggot feeder about 25% out, but this never did any good.
It was only about 10 mins before I had a good run on the method and leapt out of my chair to get across to the rod (have since bought a rod pod to deal with the hard packed gravel everywhere). I struck into the fish but it was off almost straight away. I searched up the dam again with a few casts at longer range, but bites definitely only came when away from the dam in clear water. After changing to a t-shaped boilie stop as they kept falling off with the dumb bell type, I got another run and was pleased to land a bream of about 4lb. From there on in they were unstoppable, with runs coming only 5 - 10 mins after casting. I stopped weighing anything that looked under five lbs then was very pleased to land a PB of about 8lbs - a fish with a big fat belly on it. Despite the freespool on my reel failing, making playing fish very difficult, the runs kept coming. This, it seems, is defintely the way to catch bream at Lodge. Frustratingly I had to leave early to get back as Fullers was doing a dinner party, but had I remained I think they would have kept coming. So next time it will the same rig on two rods, setup on a pod with bobbins - I'm expecting a sack full of bream and inevitably the odd carp.
The old John Wilson TV programs always had him fishing a similar setup for bream, so I reckon using a combination of the new method feeder, with the old free running technique is the way to go. No need for this self hooking stuff it seems, as apart from losing one fish I didn't miss a single one - nice long slow runs that are easy to hit, safer rig as well. Forgot to take a photo of the fish, but am hoping to break my PB again there soon!
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