Saw this article on another site. The author makes some good points, particularly about using small, sinking nymphs and not just topwater flies. Here's part one:


FLYFISHING FOR BREAM
By Cliff Hilbert

When I was in my teens in New Orleans my grandmother gave me my uncle’s old bamboo fly rod, now don’t get excited about the bamboo rod because it was an el cheapo and a wet spaghetti noodle would cast better. I taught myself how to use it and went down to the local lagoon and caught bream on it using poppers. Some years later I bought a brand new fly rod from Walmart (must have cost all of $25 including the reel and line, but remember that this was the 60s). I used that one for years, mostly on bass fishing, but every now and then I went bream fishing with it using poppers.

About five years ago I bought my first good fly rod, a 6/7-wt, 9’ St. Croix Imperial from Jim Green at Backcountry USA in Tyler. I used that for bass, bream and trout fishing (I was just learning the wonderful world of wading for trout). I asked Jim about a better rod for bream and he suggested a 7’, 3-wt. St Croix Imperial, which I bought. Now I was armed for battle! While at the shop I was looking at Jim’s bream flies and saw a number of them weren’t poppers (imagine that!). I bought several of them and began to use sinking flies (wets) for bream for the first time in my life. My favorite was a Cypert-type minnow imitation which I caught a lot of bream on, including my first state fly fishing record – a .23 lb longear sunfish.

About two years ago I began to use some of my trout flies for bream, mostly prince nymphs and pheasant tails, and found out that the bream absolutely loved them! I learned that many of the bream didn’t come up very shallow, and started using flies like a #12 bead head prince nymph, #12 copper johns # 12 bead head red squirrels and others like that which would sink fast. My catch rate and fish size went up dramatically. I also use bead head caddis pupa, zug bugs, scuds and bead head wooly buggers for bream. Bream feed mainly underneath the surface and they feed mostly on micro-organisms and insect pupae and larvae, just like trout. Of course they feed on topwater insects, but that is not a main part of their diet.

I rarely use a tapered leader for bass or bream fishing, and I have no trouble at all getting the flies to cast correctly. Most of the time I use 5 lb tippet material for a leader because tippet material is usually thinner than monofilament and thus it sinks faster. In bream fishing you don’t need the fly to alight on the water with very little disturbance. Bream are naturally curious and are drawn to a disturbance in the water. So, if a fly makes a nice splash when it hits the water it will not scare away the fish. To the contrary, it will excite them and draw them in. Ask any scuba diver who has watched fish behavior and he will tell you the same thing, bream are curious creatures and drawn to disturbances, much like people, ambulance chasers being a prime example (no, I’m not talking about attorneys, although the shoe may fit some). Recently at Lake Athens I lost several large bream because they broke my 5 lb tippet material I was using. No, they weren’t THAT BIG, but the leader was getting frayed because of the constant rubbing against vegetation and boat docks, and it would break easily. I switched to a 10 lb mono for a leader and I didn’t lose any more fish after that. Bream are not leader-shy, and you can increase the size of the leader and it will not bother them. I don’t use long leaders either. Most of the time my leaders are as long as the rod or shorter.

Ok, that’s what I use, now for how I use that equipment. When I’m bream fishing I usually fish in coves, big and small, although that’s not a rule because I do fish out on the main lake as well. I try to fish the edges of vegetation, most of the time in 2’-5’ of water. Bream use the vegetation to hide in, and they will come out of it to attack food. If the vegetation is not heavy and I can cast into it without getting tangled in it on every cast, then I will try to cast the fly into those areas. Depending on the depth, I may let the fly sink for 2-3 seconds before I impart action to it, or I may begin to give it action as soon as it hits the water. Rarely will I fast-strip the flies in. Most of the time I just strip in 1”-3” of line at a time, just to give the nymph a little movement. If I strip it in 2’ or so and haven’t gotten a hit, I recast it to another spot. If the fish were interested in it they would have hit it by then. If I get a hit I will usually cast back to that spot at least once or twice more. If I catch a fish, I’ll cast back there several times. If I come upon an area of shoreline that has no vegetation or structure, I don’t waste my time with it because if there is no place for the fish to hide then they won’t be there.

If I spot a hole in the vegetation where I can cast the fly and work it for a couple of seconds, then I’ll cast it into that hole. The new public waters state fly fishing record redear I just caught at Lake Athens on July 1, .85 lbs 10.5” x 10.2”, was that exact scenario. I saw a 2’ opening in the vegetation very near the shoreline so I cast the Copper John up into it and immediately the redear hit it. Now a #12 Copper John doesn’t hit the water gently and sink slowly, it hits the water with force and is propelled downward very quickly. The fish are very, very quick to attack something small and fast-moving like that. They are much quicker than we think. They react out of instinct. That was not a wary old bream that slowly studied the fly before he hit it because he didn’t have time, he hit it as soon as it hit the water. On July 4 I was fishing at a private lake with one of Gene Bethea’s purple and gold LSU clousers he tied for me and I cast it into a 4’ hole in the vegetation in the middle of the lake in water that was 7’ deep and caught a 1.3 lb redear, a new state record for private waters. I let it sink for 4-5 seconds, gave it a twitch and the fish took it. Openings in the vegetation are great places to fish because the fish can hide in the vegetation and attack anything that comes within range. Sure, you get tangled in the grass , but that’s just part of fishing.