Big Bream – Beginners Guide — Lubin Pfeiffer

The first fish on a feathered jig!

Beginners

Guide to Big

Bream

Lubin Pfeiffer shares his knowledge and methods to help you catch a memorable bream.

Black bream -Acanthopagrus butcheri have always been one of my favourite saltwater species to catch. They river the better the bream fishing to be. They like fallen timber of all different kinds and as many city-based live in really cool places, are super cunning and take quite a lot of skill to catch consistently with lures. They fight well for their size and when you start to get fish over 40cm you can bet not all of them will make it to the net after they are hooked! Like many fishos in Australia, some of my first fishing experiences were chasing bream with bait. From there chasing big black bream has taken me to many parts of the country. While many of you reading this magazine would’ve chased bream many times, I know there are just as many that haven’t. So I thought it would be a good idea to run explain a bit about the black bream and cover some of my favourites techniques to catch them with lures.

Where to Find Them

Black Bream are endemic to Australia and can be found from Shark Bay in the country’s west right along the Southern coast, all the way to Mallacoota in Victoria. And of course in big numbers down here in Tasmania. Tasmania is without a doubt the best place to chase bream in Australia, in my opinion. They just love the estuaries and are also found in the coastal lakes. What I have found is the more structure to a anglers would know, any form of man-made structure as well. Typically if it provides shade and cover there will usually be a stack of bream sitting around it. Rock walls or rocky outcrops are also a favourite for the bream. While there is far too many locations to mention, I usually find myself fishing places like the Scamander River, Ansons Bay and the Swan River just to name a few.

Knotless landing nets help release the fish in great condition.

Black bream are a long-lived fish and can live for around 30 years. When you consider many are not more than two kilograms in weight it quickly becomes apparent how slowly they grow. Black bream have quite a few unusual features, one of which is that they can change from male to female depending on what is going to be more beneficial for spawning in the area they are living. Young bream spend their lives in the coastal rivers until they get to about five years of age where they can travel offshore to deeper reefs. The majority of older fish spend their whole time in the estuary as each year they need to complete their spawning cycle. This sees them en mass, cruising up the upper reaches of the rivers where the freshwater enters. After they have spawned the larva can then be taken with the flow of the river down through the entire estuary. I was unaware until I did some research but black bream lay about 3 million eggs each season, which is a fair effort! This ensures that many survive predation and other factors that limit recruitment. Last year in October while fishing the Swan River in the states east and was lucky enough to see the bream doing their thing way up in the top section of the river. We had a late start to spring and while I thought the fishing would’ve fired up by then I was struggling to catch or even see a fish in the usual areas. Quite often even if you’re not catching them you will see the odd few dart out from the river bank as you work along it. It wasn’t until I made my way to the very top section of river that I saw schools of hundreds of big fish all tailing and swirling around in the shallows on the edges of the river. While I had a few casts at them, they were all completely disinterested in what I was offering and it became quickly clear what they were up to. It was awesome to see as I hadn’t seen so many large bream in one spot ever before.

What is great about chasing bream is there is one outfit that pretty much covers every scenario you’re likely to come across fishing in Tasmania. That is a 2.1metre 2-4kg fast action spin stick with a matching 2500 sized spinning reel. Load it with 2kg brightly coloured braid and finish it with a fluorocarbon leader. Leader breaking strain should be dependent on the size fish you plan to catch or the locations you are targeting them. For heavy cover and large fish, try a 3.5 - 4.5kg leader. If you find you’re not getting bites or you are fishing in fairly open water you can go lighter. Doesn’t matter if you are land or boat based an outfit such as this will get the job done.

Techniques to Catch Them

Bream fishing with lures has become a massive sport over the last decade. There are now lots of different tournaments you can fish for money and travel the country doing so. While I haven’t entered any of these yet I can see the challenge and reward in doing it. I come from a competition fly fishing for trout background where there is always a way to entice a trout to eat, and bream are the same. I’ll run you through my favourite techniques to catch them recently. Light spin sticks make bream fishing easy.

Soft Plastic Baits

Without a doubt 2.5inch Zman grubs are my go to lure while fishing for bream. These lures have become the number one money earner in competitions right across the country and after you’ve cast one at a bream you can easily see why they just love them. The motor oil and blood worm patterns are very hard to beat. I like to use grubs around structure. Anything from sunken timber, man-made structure and along rockwalls. The great thing about a grub is that you can skim the lure underneath pretty much anything to get it sinking right in the zone. While using a grub, I expect the bites to be while the lure is sinking freely. Try to always select a jig head that gives you the most amount of sinking time. I suggest using jig heads between 1.5 - 2.5 grams and change according to the wind speed and tide. If it’s blowing or flowing hard, go heavier, but as a rule always stick with the lightest you can get away with. While you will have fish that will just smash it and run off, to catch good numbers you’ll need to be in contact to feel every bite. Get the grub sinking as freely as possible but still have tight enough line that you will either see the line move or feel a tick when the fish grabs it. Usually, I just fish the first half of the cast before winding it back in and recasting. Grubs are also my number one choice for sight fishing flats dwelling bream.

Nedrigs have been around a few seasons now and they are a fantastic fish catching bait. A nedrig is a particular type of jighead that allows the plastic to sit upright when it is at rest. This allows you to fish very long pauses in between moving the lure. The plastics I’ve been running the ZMan TRD bugs and TRD craws which are awesome yabby imitations. Using a plastic that floats is imperative for this technique. Once again you have to be in contact with the lure without moving it, so it takes a little bit of practice to learn. I’ve had the most success with bloodworm and also green but I’m sure there are lots of other colours that would produce. The nedrig jighead weights come in 2 - 3 gram which is great for getting them to the bottom in a range of locations. You can now get a weedless nedrig head A selection of the authors favourite bream lures.

Sight casting the flats is a sensational way to fish! Bream love structure such as banks like this.

which would be amazing for many locations around Tasmania. I’ve had great success on the standard heads in open mudflats where the fish are mooching around and can be harder to tempt with other techniques. During one trip to Ansons Bay last year if you weren’t casting a nedrig into the sand holes you just wouldn’t be catching!

Bladed Lures

For deeper water scenarios, blades are a fantastic choice. These lures in my opinion are best fished from the edge, casting into deeper water along drop-offs, not so much at structure. They’re slim and sink fast, and are a good choice for working the first couple metres of water off of the bottom. A simple lift and wind up the slack technique is all that I use. Because you can cast a blade a very long way they are a great-searching lure that can cover a lot of water, quickly finding any feeding fish that may be around. If I’m fishing a new location with not a lot of structure, a blade will be the first lure I will tie on. It’s important to fish the entire cast using a blade as they can follow it for sometime before they eat it. Bites can come on both the lift and the drop so stay in contact! Never sink the lure with a heap of slack line as you will miss at least half the takes. Small blades are best for bream, 50mm in length or less. Weight is an interesting one as the heavier 3.5-gram models more effective. Even though they sink quite fast the bream still get ahold of them and the heavier weights make them great for fishing waters deeper than two metres. Colour has never really been all that important when using blades but I do like black, green or gold as a starting point.

Feathered Jigs

What is important about a feathered jig in the bream scene is that it is different. This is very handy in pressured fisheries such as those close to city centres. The first time I ever tied up one of these and cast it at a snag in Tasmania an absolute brute nailed it on the very first cast. That day I landed just over fifty fish on the same lure. I fish a feathered jig in the same locations as to where I would grub, but the way you fish them is slightly different from the grubbing technique. Feathered jigs unlike grubs will not easily skim across the water so they are perfect for accurate casts at the structure. They land and sink exactly where you want them too. I find sometimes with grubs they tend to bounce when you don’t want them to, punching much too far into the timber and end up snagged. Feathered jigs have great movement in the water and sink very slowly increasing the amount of time they can be eaten. Just like the grubbing technique I only fish the first half of the cast before recasting and repeating the process. My preferred colours are olive and brown. These both have a mix of UV and red flash through them. Because they are not commercially available you have to tie them yourselves! But I can assure you they are a lure worth having.

Other Lures Worth Trying

There are many other lures worth trying for bream, including cranka crabs, bibbed minnows and crankbaits. All have their place in the lure box. While I don’t use these myself, they are certainly worth mentioning as they catch loads of fish down here in Tasmania.

I can safely say that I’ll never get sick of catching bream, particularly casting lures at snags. It is just way too much fun. Hopefully, you can take away a few of these techniques and try them for yourself and see what the fuss is all about if you haven’t already.