Bream get a bad press. Slimy, slow, not much of a fight. I understand the complaints and I still think autumn bream fishing is one of the most satisfying things you can do with a rod, because when it comes off you catch a lot of fish and some of them are big.
The key thing to understand is that bream fishing is almost entirely about location and feeding. Get those two right and the rest looks after itself.
Autumn shoals are tighter and easier to find
Through summer bream shoals roam widely, particularly at night, and can be very hard to pin down. As the water cools they tighten up and become more predictable. They still move, but they patrol set routes and return to the same areas.
On a big stillwater that usually means the deeper open water rather than the margins, and the transition where a shallow shelf drops into the main basin. On rivers, look for the slower deeper glides and any long, steady stretch with a bit of depth.
The best clue is bubbles. Feeding bream produce distinct patches of pinhead bubbles that move slowly across the surface. If you see that, you have found them and you should not move.
Feed properly or do not bother
Bream are big fish that shoal in numbers, and a shoal of thirty bream will eat a genuinely surprising amount. Timid feeding is the commonest reason people fail at this.
My autumn approach is to put in a proper bed of bait at the start, then top up in smaller amounts. That means groundbait with a decent particle content, dead maggots, casters, chopped worm and corn. Six to eight balls of groundbait at the start on a big water is not excessive.
Dead maggots matter more than people realise. They stay in the swim rather than burrowing into the silt, and in autumn silt they hold the shoal in place.
Give it time
Bream fishing punishes impatience. It can take two hours for a shoal to find the bait and settle over it, and the temptation to move or to keep piling bait in is strong. Resist it. My best bream sessions have almost always started slowly and then produced a run of fish in the last third of the day.
If you have fed properly and nothing has happened after three hours, then you have probably got the location wrong rather than the feeding.
Method feeder or open-end
Both work and I use both. The method feeder is more efficient at getting a tight pile of bait next to your hookbait and it is very hard to beat on a commercial or a smaller water. On big natural waters I prefer an open-end feeder with groundbait and particles, because it lets me build a bigger bed of bait over time.
Hooklengths of ten to fourteen inches, hooks in the 14 to 12 range, and a bait that stands out. Two red maggots, a piece of corn, or a small worm section.
The bites are not what you expect
Bream bites through a feeder are often slow and deliberate rather than a smash. A gradual lift, a slow drop back, a tip that pulls round steadily. Do not sit on your hands waiting for a proper wrap around. Learn to hit the slow drop-backs and your hit rate improves immediately.
Handle them well and keep them wet
Bream are heavy, deep-bodied fish that damage easily and lose scales and slime if you drag them on grass. Big net, unhooking mat, wet hands, and if you are using a keepnet make sure it is a proper one with enough length and depth for the fish you are catching. On a good day you can put a lot of weight in a net and a cramped net does real harm.
What a good autumn bream day looks like
Arrive early, spend twenty minutes looking for signs before you set up at all. Feed heavily and accurately at the start. Fish a feeder to the same spot every cast, and if you cannot hit the same spot use a marker on the far bank and clip up. Then be patient. If the shoal arrives you will know about it, and the last two hours of light are often when it happens.
Dan Whitfield started fishing aged seven on the canal at the end of his road and never really stopped. He spent his twenties and thirties on the match circuit – club level rather than national – before deciding he’d rather catch one decent fish than a net of small ones.
These days he mostly fishes the River Trent for barbel (personal best 14lb 2oz), the Oxford Canal for roach and skimmers in winter, and the occasional gravel pit when tench are spawning and the surface fishing is too good to miss. He’s a former club secretary and still helps with junior coaching at his local angling club in Nottingham.
At The River Bend, Dan writes the coarse species guides, river fishing technique articles, and the match and pole content.
Covers: Barbel, bream, roach, tench, carp (coarse context), river fishing, canal fishing, feeder, float, match/pole