In recent years I’ve had a burning desire to better my PB bream of 16lb 7oz. I always set aside some time each year, with the hope of achieving this. Well this season was no different and I had been putting in a lot of ground work through the colder months in the hope that it would pay dividends.

My approach consisted of scaled down carp tactics using 12lb Pro Light Blend main line, Plummet Leadcore, a Covert Lead Clip set up, seven inches of 15lb Trickster and a size 8 Covert Wide Gape Talon Tip hook. This would also give me the security if I managed to hook one of the venues large carp that often succumb to quantities of bait. The aim was to lay down a big bed of crushed and 4mm trout pellets from CC Moore, dead maggot’s, corn and XXX boilies laced with fish oils. Hookbaits consisted of balanced imitation corn stack’s from Enterprise Tackle or a 15mm XXX boilie tipped with a piece of imitation corn.

With winter being so mild, I got the rods out at the end of March and managed a bite on my first light, which resulted in a small fish around 9lbs. After concentrating on some lovely gravel humps at range (that just screamed bream), I quickly tallied up thirteen blank nights on the trot and location was proving difficult. Regular baiting only encourage the venues abundant bird life and arriving to find them diving on the area two days later did little for my confidence.

On my fourteenth night of the campaign things finally came right and on dusk I had a drop back, which resulted in my first double of the year weighing 11lb 12oz. In typical bream fashion, just as I was sliding the net under the fish one of my other rods was away, which resulted in another bream weighing 12lb 2oz. Three more fish fell during the early hours (all doubles) resulting in my dream bream and a new PB weighing 16lb 12oz.

After all the effort I was understandably ecstatic, although I did have have the reservation whether the fish would return the following evening. I baited again in the afternoon and got the rods back out with my fingers firmly crossed. I needn’t have worried as an hour before dark the bream put on a great display rolling over the top of the feed I had introduced. I knew it was only a matter of time before they went down and had a feed.

An hour after darkness I received a couple of liners and it wasn’t long before my bobbin dropped like a stone. This was the sign of another sleep deprived night as I went on to land four fish (all doubles again) and another PB tipping the scales at 17lb 3oz.