Bream Rigs

Bit of advice needed on bream rigs...Sizes of hooks etc... im gonna fish 15lb fluro as the snoods.... trying to keep the tackle light.. any help very welcome...

Hi there, only ever had real success with the bream a couple of times, and they were both with the same rig on a mate's boat off the Gower Peninsula in S Wales. We fished small hokkai type things, maybe size 6 hook, possibly even smaller and tipped them with harbour rag. Fished just as close to the bottom as we could, without the lead continually dragging or bouncing on the sea bed. Hope it's some help, Steve.

just want to give this thread a bump as i would like to find out best bream rigs and tactics. hoping to catch a few this coming weekend. anyone got any info?

If its Giltheads you're after then Kamasan short shank size 4 hooks is what I've used. The trace needs to be fairly long, say about 4 foot on a running ledger with a 3oz rolling lead. I used 20lb fluoro, but 15lb should be fine if the ground is clean.

Hi

Did some research on this with anglers in the channel islands who do a lot of bream fishing... the main points they stressed was that fishing from the shore is very different from fishing from a boat. Boat fishing required a long flowing trace, small but strong and very very sharp hooks, and ideally a long flowing bait in the form of ragworm, squid strip or mackerel belly strip. They were not too worried about bumping it along the bottom, reckoning that the bream like a good rush of water to be feeding well and that the best marks were intertidal, i.e. not deep water at low water otherwise you get pollack... for the shore angling, they reckoned on shorter snoods and the best option was a bomber, same baits and again there should be a decent tidal surge... never asked about the line, although a rotten bottom was a common feature. Jim Clohessy has an article in the current IA about giltheads in Cork Harbour, excellent piece and the bugger got what looks like the new record as well!

FWIW

cheers for the info phanover and kieran. giving it a go this weekend, first time to target bream so i'll put the info to good use and see how it goes. by the way i'll be fishing from the shore.