6/7/07

Employ simple fishing tactics for bream success
By Terry Madewell

Terry Madewell Photo

Kim Reeser looks pretty pleased with this limit catch stringer of bream. This time of year, it’s not difficult to get a full load of the tasty pan fish.

Bream fishing on area lakes and rivers has been nothing short of spectacular recently. Limit catches by many different anglers have been reported. While the fish were on the beds the week before the full moon, a lot of anglers caught limits of huge bream. The bream fishing was outstanding this past weekend (before the rain set in), although the bream were a bit more scattered.

But anglers that went to the trouble to hunt them down had little problem catching plenty of big fish.

When speaking of bream, I’m referring to flatfish in general; shell cracker and all other bream including bluegill, long ear, pumpkinseeds, mollies and all the rest. There’s a bunch of all of these types of sunfish caught recently and fishing should remain excellent. Most reports have been from fishermen using live bait, particularly crickets for bream and worms for shellcrackers.

Soon, if not already, the mayfly hatches will begin. Then there’s even more opportunities to catch fish on a variety of lures and bait. You can even cram a mess of mayflies on a small hook and catch plenty of bream. You need never run out of bait when mayflies are around.

I haven’t seen mayflies yet on Lake Marion this season, but it may be happening right now …… it’s certainly about time. Other nearby lakes, such as Lake Wateree, have excellent bream fishing. The potential for numbers of fish there is great, although not the huge average size of the fish in lakes Marion and Moultrie.

There is no valid excuse for not catching a bunch of bream right now, other than simply not going fishing. And that’s not a reasonable excuse for any outdoors person.

The key to catching bream now since we’ve just passed the prime bedding time is to go hunting for them. The bream are certainly still in the lake and they’re still in fairly shallow water. The key to success now seems to be one of moving and poking and prodding with your bait into all types of cover until you locate a bunch of fish. Once located, fish hard until the action slows and then move on and find some more.

The biggest difference here is the staying on the move part instead of holding onto a good bed.

A recent bream fishing trip with some friends demonstrated that there’s almost nothing you can fish with in terms of bait or lures (as long as it’s the right size) and not get a bream to bite right now. The bream were scattered around shoreline cover such as trees, logs, stumps and brush or about any object that will hold still. If we flipped a cricket; wiggled a worm, chunked a beetle spin or cast a popping bug on a fly rod we were most likely going to get a bream to bite. And the action has been recently that a lot of bream can be found in one area. It’s not “bed” fishing in the true sense of the word, but it’s what one may refer to as a “nest” of bream.

The bottom line is you can still catch a limit of bream in short order once you find the fish. The key seems to be the willingness to spend a little bit of time searching for the areas where the fish are concentrated.

Right now the bream will possibly be found just about anyplace that has cover. That includes the long expanses of rip rap rocks along the I-95 and old Highway 301 bridges. Plus, the long stretch of rocks on the Wilson Dam has always been productive. Late evening or early in the morning with a fly rod and popping bug can produce excellent action there. Of course, live bait or small beetle spin spinners will produce excellent results there too.

A bonus here is that sometime s a big catfish will load on when fishing along these rocks.

There is one thing about fly rods that a lot of fishermen don’t realize. Fly rod fishing for bream is really quite easy. Often there are fishing shows where fishermen are very skillfully casting and rolling their fly lines in and around small targets in an effort to catch trout. You do not have to be an expert fly caster to catch all the bream, or even largemouth bass, that you can handle.

A simple an inexpensive rig from the local tackle shop with cheap fly line and small popping bugs will produce just fine. With even minimal practice once on the water, it’s an easy task to cast the bug close to the shoreline or near a stump, log or weed bed.

That’s really all that is required to get bream to bite. If you want to catch bass, then just use larger popping bugs and you can catch bass that way too.

Certainly if you become more skillful with a fly rod, that’s even better. You can learn to drop that popping bug into tight pockets or crevices in the cover. That will produce more bites. You can still catch a limit of big bream in short order with basic skills. When fishing popping bugs around a mayfly hatch, you will be hard pressed to not catch all the fish you can handle.

Now’s a great time to go bream fishing, even if they are not on the beds. Get your bream busters or light tackle rods and reels and go hunt them down for some fast-paced action and great eating fish.