Lately, fishing days have been a bit scarcer than I’d like. Partly that’s been because of atrocious weather, and partly it’s been other stuff getting in the way. I’m not complaining, but when Max and I locked in a day-and-a half bream fishing on the west coast Sunday/Monday, I was quietly hoping we’d avoid a repeat of the ridiculous conditions we braved 4 weeks earlier.
A bream worth wishing for…
In the event, we started and finished fishing in the rain and it was cold even when the sun broke through in between. All the precipitation this month meant pretty murky water – no more than a foot or so of visibility. On the other hand, the wind wasn’t the shrieking gale we had last time, and the rivers had broken out to the sea, meaning we had manageable, readable channels, flats and weedbeds rather than vast flooded expanses. With the open river mouths we also had tidal flow. In the past I’ve sometimes managed good fishing for estuary species without this, but I’ll always take the run of the tide if I can get it.
Open river mouths certainly help my bream fishing confidence – note the small wave heading up river towards Max.
If my last west coast trip was about small victories in the face of adversity, this one was just good, solid fishing. It took an hour or so on Sunday to work out a few things – in particular that the almost constant current either up or downstream meant a sink tip line was needed to get the fly close to the bottom where west coast bream usually are. From that point on, plenty of nice bream were caught fairly consistently, and by the end of the trip we’d landed and released about two dozen; all 30-40 cm.
Memories of the Wild, Wild West weather 4 weeks earlier, but the bream kept biting.
There were a few other notable points. The ‘outside’ weather made not the slightest difference to the action. Rain, wind, full sun, full cloud, rising barometer or falling, we caught fish at roughly the same rate. And although I’ve hooked bream in murky water before, it didn’t hurt to be reminded how little visibility they require to find inch-long flies (mainly Hammerheads and Bream Buggers).
This underwater pic, taken in full sunlight early afternoon, shows how little apparent visibility bream need to find flies.
Another pleasing thing this trip was how close to the ocean we caught some fish. These bream were particularly silvery and we wondered if they had developed that colouration through residence over the white sand, or if they’d even recently migrated into the estuaries from the ocean? Upstream, the residents remained a distinctly darker hue, more typical of our June trip when most estuaries were still closed.
A silvery bream just a hundred-odd metres from the sea. Resident or migrant?
As I drove home yesterday evening, another cold front arrived to batter the coast, flood the rivers, and fling trees and branches across the roads. But I’m sure that through it all, the bream just kept merrily mooching away, and I’m looking forward to my next trip already.
