Bream statewide should be bedding or preparing to bed ahead of the full moon that will occur Friday, May 1, so technically the two-week run up to the peak begins today, inasmuch as any outdoor pursuit can be held to technicalities.
Fast-paced, rod-bending action repeated over and over as long as the bait can last is only half the appeal for finding a few bream beds to monitor through the summer. The rest of the payoff arrives in the form of the fish fries that follow. The days before and the days after the first full moon of the warming spring is a capital time to catch bream. That means great action and great eating alike.
Bream, including bluegill, redear and a number of other subspecies, are vigorously-reproducing fish that gather on and around spawning beds every month of the year, but the most productive fishing opportunities do happen in the spring and summer months. The fish are typically on or around their beds at least seven days before and seven after any given full moon, though for the big events they’re around earlier and later than that. The beds are generally well-established locations, so a great time to start finding them would be this weekend. Rapidly-warming water temperatures coinciding with the May 1 full moon makes the present an absolutely prime time to give bream fishing a try.
Spring cleaning
“Everybody gets keyed in on the full moon, and it is a good indicator, but you don’t have to be right on the full moon to get into them hot and heavy because they’ll be there several days,” said Mitch Harrison, an avid fisherman from Dorsey. “Pretty often the bream will be on or around the beds when they’re not even bedding.”
In the seven days before the full moon, male bream come in and clean out the beds. On or right around the full moon itself, the females come in and lay eggs, then the males fertilize those eggs and guard the beds for about seven days after.
These beds or nests are formed in honeycomb patterns, generally in two to six feet of water, though they sometimes bed deeper. Bream prefer a shallow area with a firm bottom, and protected coves are preferred over windswept banks. If there are stumps or willow bushes around, all the better. They typically locate their nests in clusters with other bream. These clusters are known as beds, and are visible to the naked eye under water. A large bream bed will look like a rendering of the surface of the moon, pockmarked with craters and, ideally, well-populated with fish.
Bream especially prefer building beds in pea gravel. Pond or lakefront-property owners who dump a substantial amount of gravel in an area handy to the bank and cover with water just a few feet deep can all but count on having bream find and use the area all year long.
Depending on water conditions, bream use these same beds around every full moon. The best and most productive fishing opportunities happen when the fish themselves are most active. This occurs throughout the warmer months, beginning in April and continuing through September. Since March and early April were especially cool and the water is quickly getting warmer now, look for the fish to be even more fired up to act.
When the bream are on their beds, gathered tightly and remaining so for days at a time, their beds can be located by scent as well as sight. When you pull up into a cove on a still day, the scent of a bream bed is reminiscent of strawberries or watermelon. Sight fishing, though, is the true name of the game.
What you see, what you get
When they’re shallow, you can wear a good pair of polarized sunglasses and see them.
“If you don’t have sonar, look for bream beds by going around the banks and exploring shallow pockets, especially any with overhanging trees,” Harrison said. “They seem to really like an overhanging tree.”
Once you’ve located a bed, work it from the outside in. When hooked, bream will run for deeper water. If you start in the middle of the bed or right next to the bank, the hooked fish will run through the other nests, spooking the other fish. By picking them off from the outside in, one or two good bream beds can provide all the action you want.
As far as tackle goes, the lighter the better. A number 6 long shank, fine wire hook is the best place to start. Bream have a small mouth, and it can be hard to get a regular hook out, so the long shank is handy. For bluegill, you want to fish crickets and attach a split shot four to six inches above the hook, then set your cork at whatever depth the fish are. Use the lightest cork you can get away with. Porcupine quill floats are the best because they offer a really natural presentation. The fish can’t feel the float and it just works really well.
Redear typically bed in water deeper than bluegill prefer, and they seem to like eating off the bottom a little better than bluegill. You can catch them on crickets, but they seem to like red worms a little better. Just take the float off and tight line them on the bottom.
“Some people use redworms instead of crickets, especially if they’re strawberry bream fishing,” Harrison said. “Sometimes you’ll find strawberries up in bluegill beds, but I’ve never gotten onto a full blown strawberry bed unless I was in 7 or 8 feet of water.”
There’s no need to let the bait sit and marinate like you do with catfish. If you drop it in and let it fall and don’t get a bite, go ahead and move it somewhere else. When you’ve found one, you’ve found them all. When you catch one, just duplicate what you did before.
Flying away
“It’s a lot of fun,” Harrison said. “It’s a great opportunity to get a kid hooked for life on fishing.”
If live bait isn’t your thing, a fly rod with a sponge spider or a popping bug, or an ultra light spinning rod with a small Beetle Spin in black and orange work very well also. Water clarity aside, bream really seem to like orange and black.
A fly rod is especially handy because it can be easily re-rigged to fish bait. A prepackaged tapered leader, the clear line that ties onto the floating fly line by way of a nail knot, is usually 10 to 12 feet long itself, so snipping off a bit and tying on a bream hook with a Palomar or improved clinch knot is as easily done as said. It may feel a little clumsy, but it can still be cast just fine. Alternately, you can easily tag on a split shot and a cork and fish it just like a long cane pole, and you’re still set to clip all of that off and go right back to fishing a sponge cricket or spider dry quickly and easily.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
