Tony Gibson Banks 16lb 14oz Specimen Bream!

The story behind the capture of Tony Gibson’s amazing specimen bream from a difficult water that has only produced 10 examples of the species in the last 3 years!

Tony says:

Caught from a large and very ‘hard’ southern venue that has, to my knowledge, only produced about 10 bream in the last 3 years or so, but I’m hoping has the potential to produce something very special.

I was down for a 3-night session and chose a swim on the East bank that would consistently receive some wind that was due to be swinging about from NW to SW during my visit. I’d fished the swim a couple of weeks previously when I’d spent quite a bit of time carefully mapping the features with a marker float.

I’d discovered an interesting plateau type feature that was predominately 11ft deep surrounded by depths of between 13 to 15ft which it’s leading edge stretched out at an angle from quite close in to my right, to over 100 yards out as far as I could chuck a “marker” to my left. The closest edge of the plateau type feature appeared to rise up from its typical 11ft to a sort of shallower 7ft bar that then quickly dropped off into the deeper water closer to the bank and also had an interesting dog-leg type angle to it at a range of around 60 yards.

It can be quite a weedy venue so on the latest session I spent a bit of time with the marker rod again ensuring the immediate area of the “dog-leg” had remained weed-free since my last visit, as I intended to put two of my three rods around the spot, with the other fished as more of a “roamer” and cast either close to the margins on either side, or to anywhere where a fish might show.

Around midday each day, the “dog-leg” two-rod spot was baited up with about 1/3rd of a bucket of spod mix, with the 3rd rod also receiving a handful of Spods each day.

The only bite of the session was on the 2nd night of the session at around 1:00am that produced the 16lb 14oz fish. A quite typical bream bite on the right-hand of the two rods on the main spot. The bite just pulled the bobbin slowly up tight to the alarm for a couple of seconds before it dropped quickly to the floor on a slack line as the fish came towards me.

The type of bite was a good clue and as soon as I was tight to the fish and started playing it, I was sure that it was a big bream. Fortunately, there were no dramas at all and it was soon netted.

I could see in the net that it was a male bream, that always seem to be a bit chunkier than the females, and as I broke down the net and lifted the fish to the unhooking mat, once I’d ensured the weigh gear etc was ready, I did start to wonder if I’d finally got a “17”.

I’ve a PB bream of 18lb 7oz and have had several “16’s”, but I’ve a gap in the 17lb bracket that I’d like to fill one day and I did start to wonder if this fish might be the gap-filling “17”.

However, careful weighing revealed it to weigh 16lb 14oz, which obviously I was still very happy with… after all, it was my second biggest bream ever!

 

The spod comprised a mix of:

Dynamite CompleX-T 4mm pellets

Dynamite 4mm Marine Halibut pellets

Dynamite 2mm Swim Stim Betaine Green pellets

Dynamite 2mm Swim Stim Red Krill pellets

Dynamite Sweet & Milky Pulses and Particles

Chopped/crumbed CompleX-T boilies

Dynamite XL Sweetcorn

Dampened with a good glug of a mix of Dynamite Sweet Tiger, Worm and Belachan Liquids.

The hookbait on the rod that produced the bite was my standard bream hookbait consisting of a 12mm CompleX-T boilie glugged in the CompleX-T hookbait dip, and tipped with a piece of Enterprise plastic corn glugged in green-lipped mussel flavour.

 

Tackle: 

12ft Carp Spirit Magnum rods

Okuma “8K” Big Pit reels

(0.38mm) Carp Spirit ‘Velocity’ mono mainline

3.5oz flat pear leads on safety lead clips

Rig: 8 inches of 20lb “Combi-soft” with the last half-inch of coating by the hook peeled off, tied knotless-knot to a size 7 Carp Spirit Medium Curve Shank hook, with a small piece of rig tubing on the hook trapping the short hair down close to the point of the hook helping it to flip over and achieve a quick hold.

Watch Paul Garner’s tip on how to catch specimen bream, here.

The post Tony Gibson Banks 16lb 14oz Specimen Bream! first appeared on Dynamite Baits.

The post Tony Gibson Banks 16lb 14oz Specimen Bream! appeared first on Dynamite Baits.

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