Butterfly rig and conventional round bait
This is a little dodge I have done a fair bit over the years when nuisance species have been a problem and one that has resurrected itself in my mind again this last week.
I had someone contact me on Facebook asking if I could give any tips on avoiding Bream. the water he’s fishing is stuffed with bream and has a very low density of carp. It was the carp he was seeking and was running out of ideas.
I ran through the usual of avoiding all types of pellet and fish meal type baits which the bream love and then went along the lines of larger baits etc. It turned out he had already gone along these routes but was still catching bream on double 20mm boilies.
I had the same problem many years ago whilst fishing the River Trent for carp – I really struggled to avoid hooking bream. I did a few things then which certainly cut the bream catch rates down.
First of all I must say bream feeding in the swim can and does attract carp but there are times you really don’t want to be winding them in all the time. The first thing which helped a fair bit and also worked when chub were in the swim was to hook the fish then put the rod back in the rest leaving the culprit to kick around in the swim for a while. This had the effect of putting the rest of the shoal on edge if not spooking them from the swim altogether. It wasn’t foolproof though.
The next step was to start using different shape baits and relatively hard baits such as Brazil Nuts. My first cast into the river with a Brazil Nut hook bait produced a carp for me before I even had chance to fire any free baits in! It cut the bream takes down but still I caught a few.
The third step was to make the boilie a little more difficult for the bream to take in the first place. It took a while to think of this such obvious method and that was to simply cut a 20mm boilie in half then put it on the hair with both halves back to back creating a butterfly type effect. This worked a treat and suddenly my bream hook ups were vastly reduced.
I mentioned this to the chap on Facebook and he came back to me saying he would give that one a try.
This morning I opened my emails up and in front of me was the following message….
“hi there i took your advice bout back to back baits to keep bream away from me an it payed off iv had my first 30 tonight at 32 7 it went like a total train took bout 15 mins to land ill post some pics soon as possible an thanks for the advise it was brilliant”
It is things like this that make my job seem so worthwhile and i sat there for some time with a smug grin on my face. Another happy angler.
The butterfly rig isn’t just for putting Bream off though. It is one which is particularly useful this time of the year for
Maximum visual appeal
fishing over leaves etc as it gives maximum visual appeal as well as letting the natural food signals emit from the bait quicker than a round sealed bait.
The flat bottom bait also makes the bait sink that little bit slower acting like a parachute. Combine it with half a pop up on the top and you can make it real slow sinking if desired.
The Butterfly set up is yet another real simple method I hardly ever see used these days. In fact I think I may just have a cast with one again this week-end.
Best fishes
Shaun
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