This year my brother and I decided we would start the new River Season in a more traditional way and get out on the drains for opening night on the 16th June in pursuit of some Bream with hopefully a nice Tench thrown in for good measure!
We chose a fairly non-descript section of drain as most of it all looks pretty featureless anyway, although this particular section was around 10 feet deep and known for its Bream shoals so seemed a good place to start. A week before opening night we baited very heavily with around 20kg of trout pellet and mixed particle, and then visited a couple of times to top up with bait before opening night.
On the evening of the 15th June Adam and I arrived after work to find the stretch of drain empty of other anglers which is always a relief when you have pre baited somewhere. We soon made the short barrow journey to our swims to have a leisurely set up ready to cast out at midnight. While we set up our gear there were many Bream rolling and fizzing all over the area so we topped up the swim with some more pellet and sweetcorn to keep them in the area until later!
At midnight the rods were quickly swung into position baited with 12mm Stickybaits Krill Dumbells on a short 6 inch 8lb Fluorocarbon hooklink to a Fox Method Feeder. The feeders were then wrapped in Dynamite Baits Marine Halibut Method Mix, a lovely fishmeal based mix that Bream can't resist.
As soon as the rods were in the rod tips were knocking and the bobbins were dancing with liners every few seconds. It took minutes before I had the first one, a spirited fight from a decent size Bream around the 5lb mark. Between midnight and about 5:00am Adam I were up and down like a yoyo, playing fish, re baiting and recasting. We had lots of smaller Bream and some decent ones which we popped in the keepnet ready for a few pics at first light.
It was a pretty hectic session and left us absolutely knackered as we packed up at 6:00am and headed back to the tackle shop for a very busy day at work! It was worth it though as we enjoyed the traditional start of the season and something we hadn't done since kids so we'd certainly be doing it again. With the weather now getting extremely hot in the summer we were now looking forward to doing some floater fishing for Carp.
