Big bream saves a blank! A quick session on the river Trent

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Tackle

Rod

Leeda 12ft carp feeder rod

Reel

Garbolino challenger 5000 size feeder reel

Mainline

8lb Maxima

Hooklengh

8lb Preston flurocarbon 

Bait

Groundbait

The groundbait was a simple mix of liquidised wholemeal bread with a good helping of 4mm coarse pellets. With the river running faster than usual I dampened the liquidised bread very slightly by dipping my hand in the water and giving the bread a good mix around. This gives the bait enough moister to hold in the feeder without it becoming too sticky.

Hookbait 

The hookbait was hair rigged bread. I punched around 5 or 6 discs of bread with a small meat punch and then thread them onto a hair rig via a quick stop needle. The quickstop is a really nice way of presenting bread for bigger species and allows you to fish longer casts with the confidence that your hookbait is still attached. The bread discs are very bouyent and tend to float at first so a BB shot a couple of inches from the hookbait keeps it pinned close to the bottom.

Rig

I chose to use my usual quick change feeder rig. The hooklengh was around 3ft in length. I used a long hair rig with a quickstop to take the chosen bread hookbait with my favourite kamasan b911 hair rig hook. A single BB shot was placed a couple of inches from the hook to pin the hookbait to the bottom.

To learn more about the rig and how to tie it please click here!

The session

With just a couple of hours to spare I arrived on the Nottingham embankment stretch of the river Trent at around 5.30pm. Although I arrived in the dark it was surprisingly easy to set up due to the many street lamps on both sides of the river. After only 20 minutes I had my self organised and ready to fish. I loaded the feeder with my mixture of liquidised bread and coarse pellets and hair rigged five discs of bread before making the first cast of what was going to be a very short session. Usually on this venue I would fish at distance but with the extra pace on the river due to the flood water I decided on a spot at around 20 meters. Here I could just hold bottom with a feeder of around two ounces.

I made the first cast, Waiting for the feeder to hit the bottom before paying out a couple of meters of line from the reel. This creates a large bow in the line and helps hold bottom in the strong current. I was just having a tidy up of my kit after the frantic rush to get set up and to my suprise I had two sharp knocks on the quiver tip. I suspected these where propably false bites from leaves or debris being carried down the river in the current. I was then stopped in my tracks as the tip arced over and I lifted into what felt like a really heavy fish. With the strong floodwater comditions it was hard to tell how big the fish was as it held out in the flow. I held the fish on a tight line and allowed it to move slowly downstream before it rolled on the surface. A lot of pressure was nessaccary to bring the fish up stream across the surface of the river for netting but the b911 hook held firm as the fish graced the landing net. Looking at the fish in the net I was convinced I had my first river double. The fish was exceptionally long and also very deep. I placed the fish in the keepnet to weigh at the end of the session and quickly re-cast to the same spot. After an hour or so and several more casts repeating the same process it was clear that whatever fish where there had now moved on, Probably spooked by the disturbance of the first fish. I weighed the only fish of the short session and it actually went just over eight pounds so not quite the double I thought but an exceptional river bream never the less especially in the current conditions. With a message from my partner saying that she had a roast dinner waiting in the oven it was time to pack up and go home to enjoy some nice food and a bit of time with the family. A very cold session but also one that was very rewarding. This session proves that if you have a bit of spare time on your hands you shouldn't hesitate to get on the banks as even the shortest of sessions can throw up excellent rewards.