We visit the incredible Ferry Meadows with England International Mick Vials

Mick Vials

Rotherham

52

NuFish

I guess as anglers we all have happy hunting grounds, venues that are always kind to us. Ferry Meadows is that venue for me, yes I have fond memories of the River Trent, but Ferry Meadows has been such a prolific venue for me over the years. Yes I have been blessed with some great pegs on the venue, but as we all know, making the most of the good pegs is rarely as easy as it sounds. And I like to think that it is how we approach the good swims that makes the difference. 

So you join me today on the High Bank of Gunwade Lake where I’m going to show you how I approach a bream Mecca such as Ferry Meadows. 

The Venue

Ferry Meadows is a magnificent water, a key part of the River Nene system. In fact the river actually enters one end of the venue and flows through Gunwade, into Overton Lake and then back into the river. It’s a truly wild venue where fish can come and go. Some years there are thousands of bream in here and others there are less. But that is what keeps things interesting, the venue is ever-evolving. 

But the bream fishing here, when they are ‘on’ is unlike anywhere else. The average size of the fish combined with the wild and exposed nature of the lakes makes it such a fantastic place to fish. I just love the fishing here and it suits the attacking angler. 

Peterborough & District AA do a cracking job of providing a truly wild experience and for my money this is the premier bream water in the country. 

Bait 

Bream fishing showed signs of evolving into ‘carp fishing lite’ a decade or so ago. Pellets and Boilies came to the fore thanks to the Ringer family and it looked like natural baits would become a thing of the past. Thankfully though, natural baits combined with the more modern offerings all play a part in bream fishing. 

Groundbait is simple for me – Sonubaits 50:50 Green. This rich blend of crushed pellets has been a firm favourite of mine for years when I’m looking to catch bream. I fully believe that when trying to catch bream you want a strong fishmeal groundbait and this mix is exactly that. 

Particle bait wise, at Ferry I think casters are very effective. I don’t use casters a lot in my bream fishing but I do believe they work well here. Maggots are a must and just like casters I have great faith in dead maggots here. In fact they are my main hook bait choice too. 

The bream anglers favourite, worms, are in the bag but I stress they aren’t the mainstay of my approach. I have had days when they are a magnet to the bream here but also days where they have the opposite effect. I will always start without them, if worms are going to work you will get a response straight away so I prefer to work the swim with the other baits first before reaching for the scissors. I do however bring redworms for the hook and a bunch of these beauties can get you a bite when everything else fails. 

Corn is a great visual bait and I believe in this clear water having some colour in the swim is important. I’ve witnessed bream dropping down when they clock colour on the bottom so I’ll always stick some corn in the initial feed. It is a hook bait option of small fish are an issue but to be honest when the bream are in the swim, small fish tend to back off.

I do like to carry pellets with me, just the standard 2mm micros as they are an excellent bait. My only issue with pellets is not being able to use a 2mm on the hook! So while I bring them, I do prefer casters, maggots and worms as I can use all of those on the hook. 

Before I finish talking about bait I must mention the wafters and boilies. They are in the bag, there’s some swims here with intense weed and the only option is to use the Method feeder. Having the option of a bright wafter on the hook is important. I don’t use them on a traditional set up though. 

Initial Feeding

Every venue is different but Ferry is definitely a venue where being positive with bait can pay off. This is very much a traditional venue where it pays to lay a table and wait for the fish to find it. Ferry is a huge expanse of water and I believe it takes fish a while to find you so once they do, you need to make sure there is enough bait to ‘hold them’. 

For that reason I will always make up one pint of particles, a mix of casters, maggots, corn and micros. I then add groundbait to it, just enough to pinch the feeding feeder together. 

A large baiting feeder is then used combined with a proper feeding rod. It pays to be over-gunned, the wind can be wild here and even getting a bait up feeder 50metres can be a challenge. So gun up and make the job easy.

On that note I use a 50g bait up feeder, I’ve actually glued to leads together to achieve this. I see many anglers use a light bait up feeder which is great on a commercial feeder match, but if you want to be accurate on these wld places, don’t be afraid of the grammage! These big feeders need some weight to help fire them to the distance and the bait up rods are designed to take it. 

As we are pleasure fishing today I am going to feed the bait and then get on with setting up. But in a match, feed the bait but don’t expect a bream until the second hour usually. In fact if I get one inside the first hour I usually feel a little unsettled, the saying “it’s not where they start, it’s where they end up” is so true at Ferry meadows. 

Tackle For The Job

It’s important to be tooled up. As I mentioned before this is a wild place and although it isn’t a venue where distance is a huge factor, but you still need to fish up to 60metres. 

Today I am faced with a very strong wind so I am going to target a distance of 45metres. This is a noted area for fishing a bit shorter and I see no reason to buck the trend. We need to be accurate and id rather fish slightly shorter well, rather than longer, badly. 

A 12ft 6in feeder rod is the choice today but I wouldn’t hesitate to use a stronger distance style model if hitting the mark is difficult. This is matched to my old faithful 520 Extremity reels. 

Interestingly I use Detexion mono rather than the usual braid. These big bream give you amazing bites so I don’t need the intense bite detection properties of braid but I still want to know what is going on in the swim. Detexion bridges that gap, its a low-stretch mono so I can read what’s going on in the swim but it has just enough stretch to make playing these big bream more enjoyable than the bone shaking braid! I have gone for 5lb (0.20mm) on the reel matched to an 8lb (0.26mm) shock leader. A lovely balanced set up that’s perfect for big bream. 

If smaller skimmers and roach were important on the venue then I would stick to using braid, but here where big bream and tench are the target, I prefer the slight stretch of Detexion. 

My rig is a simple running set up, the same rig that I just a bout always use. I slide a swivel onto my shock leader and then tie a big loop in the line. This is then cut and a loop is formed in the end of this tag (for your hooklength). A No8 Stop is crimped above the little know above this. 

We always used twizzled booms but as our experience has grown we realised that the swizzle was actually causing problems and tangles. 

A hooklength of 70cm is added to complete the set up, 0.16mm or 0.18mm depending on the weed situation. The ever-reliable Tubertini Series 18 is the hook of choice, the ultimate bream hook in my view. A size 14 or 12 is used depending on the hook bait. 

Feeders

While I wait for the bream to arrive I may as well talk feeder choice. There is nothing new here but I like positive feeders when bream fishing and the ZIPPLA is exactly that. I carry numerous sizes and weights to ensure I remain accurate even in strong winds. 

I will build with a larger size to start before I catch my first fish. My thinking being that I want to keep feeding before the fish get here. However once I catch one or start getting liners then I will actually swap to a smaller feeder. Sometimes the best ‘catching’ feeder is the smallest feeder in your collection, even for big bream! 

Of course the window feeder is always important but for bream I do prefer a open-end as a rule but the window is always on the subs bench should I need to try it. This can be the case later in the session when I’m trying to nick a late fish or two when I feel the peg is waning. 

Fishing Time 

So the initial bait has been in the swim for a good hour now whilst we’ve been chatting and photographing and I’m itching to get in and get a fish or two caught. Confidence and patience are essential for all bream anglers and the ability to not panic can really help. It can take time for bream to show up and the last thing you want to be doing is getting itchy feet and start gambling before the game has even started!

Today though it is going like clockwork and just one or two casts are all it takes to get the first pull. Three dead maggots were the starting choice and it’s don’t the job. Still a favourite hook bait of mine despite underwater footage on this very venue that alludes to it being ignored. I have slipped on the medium ZIPPLA now as I feel there is plenty of bait in the swim, but if bites slow down I will stick the bigger feeders on to try build the peg up. 

This brings me onto the subject of re-feeding. A shoal of bream can clear out the swim very quickly of bait and it’s important to read the swim. You don’t want to feed the swim again once everything has been eaten completely and all indications have stopped. The bream could be long gone by the time you realise what’s going on! 

So the key time to top up is recognising that something is changing. Bite times could be getting longer or you could be getting less liners. Spot this and feed accordingly. Don’t be scared to pick up the feeding rod and starting again. But as I mentioned there is a fine balance between feeding a load of bait on the heads of feeding fish (possibly spooking them) or leaving it too late when the bream are in fact long gone. I guess this is where experience comes to the fore. 

Today I have actually caught seven or eight fish, including a beautiful tench, before bites and indications are noticeably slowing down. I act quickly and introduce five bait-up feeders of bait. It is one of those days where the fish are responding and and within 15minutes the fish are back with a vengeance and I get my second ‘visit’ of the day.

Worms have been ok today, the fish are definitely not put off by them today but I also don’t see them as the reason I am catching neither. So I decide to cut them out and stick to feeding maggots, casters and corn with that triple maggot hook bait. 

It’s been a red letter day, but I feel it is the perfect demonstration of bream fishing as I see it. The need for patience is there but also the need to be proactive and spot the feeding patterns is crucial for continued success.