Sometimes fishing gives a lot to think about. The angler knows perfectly well, that there are big fish in the water, and yet only a fishy little thing still takes him. However, experimentation explains it all. It often turns out, that the lack of success is due to fishing in the wrong zone…
No angler is that stupid, so that you cannot learn something from him! This is especially true of the so often ridiculed Sunday snacks. Sometimes it even gets an impression, that mother nature gifted these fellow with gurgling stomachs (and maybe grumbling wives?) with some special skill. Every year I looked at the net for a certain "amateur”, fishing like me in Lake X, and every year I was jealous at the sight of the fine bream fluttering in it. They were almost always fish weighing more than two kilograms, and there were also real pans from time to time. But the most interesting thing was this, that the angler I watched caught all these cautious fish without any fancy tricks – for long, shaky telescope, small fishing reel, a relatively large float and for a traditional white and red worm sandwich. He tempted very sparingly and didn't wait more than an hour to pick up the first big bream. So I don't think I will shock anyone, if I say, that I also once wanted to play with such handsome fish. At first glance, there was nothing difficult about it…
Complete failure
I remember my first day of deliberate "catching" big bream until today for this reason, that it was a complete failure. Then I put together a super-delicate set, I prepared a whole bucket of attractive groundbait, I tried to get as many red dung worms as possible. I made a precise bait, I put the bait on the bottom and began to wait patiently for the fish to appear, of course the biggest bream in the whole lake. Bream did indeed appear in the baited fishery, they started taking one over the other and although all my fishing felt like a hard piece of work, Minute by minute, I felt more and more despair. The average weight of the fish I caught was within the cursed 30 i 50 decagram! But this is not the end, because, as we know, fate is sometimes extremely cruel. In the early afternoon my friend "Sunday" angler showed up by the water, he caught his five great bream very quickly, as he expressed himself, for smoking, he nodded sympathetically to me, he rolled up his gear and went home. It is known - lunch was waiting for him! It took quite a long time before I had an epiphany. My Sunday angler was successful only because of this, that he was fishing with very crude equipment! Of course not that, that in Lake X the fish had a special fondness for thick lines and large hooks, but that's why, that thanks to the considerable load on the set, this colleague was casting the bait very far from the shore. On the second day I put together a much more solid rig and finally my lure also landed in the big bream zone. It's hard to believe, how joyfully the first concrete blow-up of the float worked for me, the first successfully completed hall of a handsome golden frying pan.
After catching large fish, I started to "scientific" explain the essence of this phenomenon. For a more complete picture, however, I must add, that the water in the lake is exceptionally clean, and the bottom falls very gently – no more abrupt faults, no noticeable drops. Even when fishing with an eight-meter pole, the ground was less than a meter and a half. Throughout the summer, I lured from a boat at various distances from the shore and "tested" the size of the bream visitors to these places. One day, I only attracted one spot and went fishing for several hours for white and red bug sandwiches.
In this or very similar way, the individual age groups of bream "divide" in a natural coastal lake by a strip of water. Angler wishing to catch specimens regularly should always throw the fish and feed the bait in deeper water. The size of quiet feeding fish and the most common feeding place also determine the location of pike sites.
The limit of occurrence
My experiences have led me to interesting, though a bit trivial conclusion – different parts of the lake were occupied by different age groups of bream. Of course I am very pleased, that I was able to establish it.
In the belt of water from reeds to a depth of about one meter, only wetlands dominated. At a depth of one and a half to two meters, there was a feeding zone for medium-sized fish (up to one kilogram) and only in places with a depth of more than two meters, you could expect bites of really large bream.
The funniest thing was, that all fish obeyed this unwritten rule with iron consistency. For ten years of systematic fishing in Lake X, I caught only one single bream in shallower water outside the "border of the zone" of a large bream, but it was just before the spawning of these fish.
Explanation of the pike puzzle
It soon turned out, that, along with the exploration of the "secret of bream", I also managed to solve many other puzzles about Lake X. This reservoir has been famous for its greats for many years, but almost impossible to catch pike with a fishing rod.
The bream gave me a flawless answer as to why this was happening. You can read in every fishing textbook, that pikes almost always hunt at the border of reed strips. Most anglers look for them there too, mostly with a meager effect.
Big pikes from Lake X mock their vivid eyes at "book rules", for they are all standing approximately 20-40 meters from the shore. Why? After all, medium-sized bream there almost fall into their mouths by themselves! In year, in which I learned the secret of bream, I also caught a larger pike in this lake for the first time. A seven-kilogram specimen was taken in the distance 30 meters from the shore and of course – I'm stupid to mention it again – he had a 35 cm bream in his stomach…