5/8/08
No doubt about it, springtime is bream-busting time
By Terry Madewell

Terry Madewell Photo

Springtime bream fishing is great fun and makes for great eating too. Pictured here are father and son team, Dave Johnson with son Erik, with a great catch of bream taken from a Lake Marion bed.

With water in the lake again, it’s time to think in terms of shallow water fishing for bream. Bream fishing is one of the many outstanding fisheries we have available in lakes Marion and Moultrie. But without water in the cypress trees and on the flats, it’s just not the same. Now, however you can get back into some of your old haunts and get in on the bream action.

I’m a big believer in the full moon and bedding/spawning for several species. However, that’s not the only time they can be caught in big numbers. But fortunately, we’re now coming up on the next full moon cycle. So it’s time to start looking for bream beds in earnest.

It’s a rite of spring to buy that first box of worms or a cage of crickets. If you haven’t started bream fishing yet, it’s time to do it. Bream are an aggressive fish and your hook-up rate is usually pretty good. So out of the box or worms or cage of crickets you can usually count on catching several dozen of these battling bream. It is the big, bull, bedding bream that will make the line on your bream buster “sing” as it is stretched and pulled almost to the breaking point.

Bring plenty of bait. I know from personal experience that there can be serious complications among even the most lengthy friendships when the bream start biting and there’s only a couple of crickets left in the box.

There are several ways to successfully catch bream when they’re on the bed. One of the most often used and perhaps most fun way around lakes Marion and Moultrie is to use a long cane pole or fiberglass “bream buster.” All you do is bait up and simply swing and flip your bait in and around shallow water cover until you locate a concentration of fish.

The basic rigging is simple. Most bream experts use eight- or ten-pound test line and tie a length of line to the pole that is almost as long as the pole. If you have a 10-foot long pole, then use about nine feet of line. This way, when you hook a bream and snatch him out of the water, the pole will bend and allow you to swing the fish into your waiting hand to unhook him. If the line is too long, you’ll have to struggle to get the fish out of the water.

Use a slip float, one that allows you to easily change the depth you’re fishing. In some areas, you may only want to fish a couple of feet deep, while other areas may require you drop the bait down to five or six feet of water. It’s a real positive aspect to catching a lot of fish to be able to make this adjustment quickly and easily.

Some anglers will use ultra light spinning rods instead of the bream poles and that’s fine too. One of my best bream fishing buddies does this and he is a wizard at casting the rig into tight quarters. That is a key to your success if you use spinning tackle. Accurate casting makes a world of difference. That’s usually why I simply use the long pole and slip float. I’ll just slip in quietly and drop the bait right where I hope it needs to be. In either instance, you would need to keep on the move until you locate a bunch of fish.

Look for small pockets with sandy or gravel bottoms; these are ideal for bream beds. While the bream will bed along flat stretches of shorelines, a small pocket is always a high-probability area.

Of course, if you have the ability to smell a bream bed, you can move along faster and sniff your way to bream fishing success. A lot of people who are not in the know break into a wide-mouth grin when I talk about “smelling” a bream bed.

The “smell” is particularly hard to describe. In its most basic form it could be described as a “fishy” smell. The unknowing really chuckle at that one. A more precise description would be that it has a pungent watermelon-like smell with a hint of over-used fish grease aroma. No matter how you describe it, it’s unmistakable once you learn it.

To finish off the process, take the time to fish any potentially good looking or fishy smelling area thoroughly. By the way, there is a difference between a dead and decaying fish smell and that of a bream bed.

Generally the bream can be found bunched up tight. They may all be congregated in a spot the size of your boat. So don’t make a couple of random casts to a good-looking target area and then leave.

Take one of those fresh, smelly crickets or wiggling worms and keep pitching it around the area until that float takes a nosedive. Then you’re set to enjoy some of the best fishing action of the spring.

As a good friend of mine often says, you cannot worry about a job, a problem or life in general while watching a bream cork. It makes you focus your entire world on that float and the fun at hand.

That … and bream are great fun to catch and scrumptious to eat.