Gearing up for Bream

The good thing about bream fishing is that you can do it on the cheap and still catch impressive quantity and quality fish. I've caught 35+cm regularly on a $25 Jarvis Walker combo when bait fishing. Rod & reel you can go inexpensive. Where you will want to spend a little extra money is on the line and the hooks.

Reel selection: 3 ballbearing and higher in a 1000-1500 size, no bigger. To catch bream you don't need a lot of line, and depending on where you go you're going to be holding a rod quite a bit. Go light.

Rod selection: You're going to want a 6'6" (200cm) rod minimum length around the 5kg weight range with a sensitive tip and a medium flex. Generally if you give it a good shake , the tip should move up & down with a bit of whip, but the mid-section of the rod should remain fairly straight. If the rod is too short and stiff, you're going to have trouble feeling the bites, and will pull bait right out of their mouths without hooking up. Too soft and you won't be able to turn a fish before it's got you around structure. A 7'6" rod is a bang-on length for fishing under structure.

Line selection: First off, around Brisbane landbased you're going to be doing a lot of fishing in relatively murky water. For bream this is a good thing as they are equally, if not more active in the murk. This also means that you do not need to be as picky about line. For this type of fishing it's more important that you get line for its strength and durability characteristics rather than marketing around visibility. Personally I've found that using a braid line in the 6-10lb range is ideal for a main line. I choose braid for 2 reasons. #1 it is pretty much the thinnest line per breaking weight. Thin line is good for keeping the rig as light as possible. #2. It doesn't stretch. This is important to be able to turn fish quickly away from protective structure. The disadvantage of braid is that it's tougher to use in the wind, it's more expensive than mono, and that lack of stretch can mean you need to be more careful with the bigger fish to avoid sudden bust-offs. While good line is expensive, the good news is that you don't need a lot of it on your reel. 120m will last a very long time. If you buy a cheap combo that comes with mono line, don't worry, that mono will come to good use to pad the spool for the good line. Simply spool off and store about 1/2 of the spool of mono line, then tie the good line to the end of the mono and spool the good stuff on. (Read up on the double-uni knot to tie line-to-line. You'll need this knot to tie your leader on as well.) This helps keep your spool filled for easy casting, while not costing you an entire spool of expensive line. If you're game to try braid out, a good, inexpensive option is Jarvis Walker's Hercules braid in 10lb. It's bright yellow, but as I mentioned, in murky water that means nothing. (It does aid your own visibility at night) It's inexpensive, and I still use it on my secondary rod having never had a snap-off due to the line. Like all braids, trim regularly as soon as you start seeing wear. With the Hercules braid it's perfectly fine with a few small scuffs.

Leader selection: One issue with using braid is it's lack of stretch, and while it's breaking strength is good, it's resistance to abrasion is very poor. This means when you get a fish that manages to swallow the hook, or one that gets you near some oysters, braid will last about 10 seconds of abuse before breaking. The solution is to use a heavier mono line as a leader. My personal line of choice for a leader is a decent brand 20lb mono. line such as Daiwa. 20lb can be a bit stiff, but I find this helps when I do happen to hook a snag, the flex and stiffness of the line gives me a chance to flick a hook off an encrusted rock.

Hook selection: There are two hooks you're going to need for Bream fishing depending on your bait and target. These are a #4 long-shank (or extra long shank) and a #4 bait-holder. These should be decent quality, chemically sharpened hooks. Personally, bang for the buck you can't go past Mustads. I recommend avoiding Jarvis Walker hooks. The metal they select for the hooks is too hard (hooks can easily snap, and I've lost 2 30+ bream due to the hook snapping in half) and the barb is too large. A large barb means there's less chance that a fish is going to work itself off, but it makes it a mess to try and unhook a fish. Also, with the harder steel, you can't really bend the barb without *snap*. (Been there, tried that.) JW hooks also don't stay sharp.

Sinkers: Really you only need two sinker sizes in your kit to catch Bream. Size 0 and 1. Anything bigger than that will work against you. The biggest cause in my opinion for lost fish (or completely unnoticed ones) is the sinker is too heavy. Usually I start with a size 1, then if I start getting bites but no pulls I swap down to a 0. If you're fishing in current too strong for a size 1 then you're probably in too much current to catch bream on bait.

In my next post I'll cover off how to rig all of this up.