PRACTICE MATCH No. 1

PRACTICE MATCH No. 1

Big bream on the Havel, Germany

As spring has arrived, some friends and I decided it was time we start practicing for the first matches of the year. So that is how on a frosty Sunday morning I found myself standing outside our house waiting for a friend to pick me up. As we sat in his car going to the canal where we would practice, we both had our doubts about the conditions and whether the fish would be feeding. These doubts were well founded because the previous weekend I had had a long and unsuccessful session catching only one bream.

When we arrived at the canal we found it was swollen with melted snow. This was not encouraging. We chose three swims on the bend of the canal. The first swim farthest upstream was, as we all knew, an excellent spot for bream, but on that day it had a very strong current flowing through it. The second swim was on the bend and presented some slack water closer to the bank and also had deep water, so to all of us it seemed a good choice. The third swim was positioned on the other side of the bend where the canal widened out and slowed down. This spot seemed ideal: it had a slow current, there was a big area to fish in, and there was tons of space for setting up tackle. The only drawback was that the water in front of the swim within casting distance was about 5ft deep and we had all fished this swim before and not been successful. After getting all our stuff out of the car we drew our pegs and I got lucky, I drew peg number two. Half an hour later everything was ready and we started fishing.

After a few casts to get a rough idea how fast the current was and the depth of water I was fishing in, I decided to fish at a slight angle downstream from where I was sitting at a distance of about 15 meters just at the edge of the fast water. I started off my swim by introducing about 6 feederfulls of groundbait into it. After that I clipped on a 40cm hook length with number 18 line and a size 16 pin hook. Having fished this stretch of the river a lot, I knew that the best bait was traditional white maggots. Once I had baited up I cast out to my spot and waited.

The first half hour passed by without much happening, the only consolation was that neither of my friends had caught anything. Suddenly about three quarters of an hour into the match my tip was violently pulled around. When I set the hook I could feel a nice bream on the end. After about two minutes of slowly getting the fish in and being careful not break the hook length, the fish broke the surface in front of me. It was a lovely slab of a bream. I gently manoeuvred it into the landing net and the fish was mine. Unfortunately in Berlin you have to kill all bream and roach that you catch, so I had to hit the fish on the head and drop it into the bucket. I was clearly in the lead. A few minutes later the tip went straight and I struck into another lovely bream that shortly joined my first bream in the bucket. I thought that I had a shoal of bream on my peg, but I was to be disappointed. The next two hours passed by without either of my friends catching anything. I tried everything I could, I tried adding some color to my bait by using pink Berkley trout paste, I tried pole fishing, I tried trotting a float through my swim, and I tried using sweet corn. But all I managed to catch was one 5oz roach. But the worst was still to come. First my friend on peg one caught a nice bream, but then in the last ten minutes my friend on peg three caught four big bream in a row. So we had all been surprised by peg three for producing the biggest weight of fish.

Tackle                     

    On that day I fished with my Tf gear 10ft compact commercial feeder (I have also written a review of this rod on my blog). This is an excellent rod at a low price and is well worth having a look at. My reel was a TCA SPINFOCUS GT2000H. This is a superb reel especially for long distance feeder fishing because it has a high retrieve ratio. As line I recommend that you use braid. It is less forgiving but you get very good bite indication and it is truly awesome when you are playing a fish on it. As for the rig, see below.