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Use your trout gear.

The Tasmanian brown trout season is now closed but the bream are out and about. You do not need any fancy gear as your trout gear will do, use your 5 or 6 weight trout rods with a floating line or a sink tip line. Your standard trout leader is fine too but I would go with 2x or 3x for its strength in nine or twelve feet, the stronger leader will allow you to give the stick to the bream before they dive back in around the sticks. You can always add tipped onto the end of your leader to add length. Polaroid sun glasses will also help you in seeing fish amongst the sticks.

What flies to use.

Now, you can catch bream on your trout flies like wooly buggers and Mrs Simpson however, there are a few flies that are more targeted to bream. Crazy Charlies are a great shrimp pattern to throw at bream. Crazy Charlies in orange or pink are both great colors. Another fly for bream is Clousers a great bait fish pattern. Clousers in plain white, olive and white and also chartreuse and white are all great colors. Bream won’t usually take a moving fly but instead like to take it when it has stopped moving so adding pauses into your retrieve will greatly improve your catch rate.

Where to go.

Bream is an estuarine species and live in brackish water. The East Coast of Tasmania has quite a few great bream fisheries in both coastal lagoons and rivers. The famous Scamander River near St Helens is a great place to target bream. A boat will give you more accesses to areas but there are also land based access. Around the mouth of the river and around the top boat ramp are great access for a shore-based angler. There is a great jetty at the top boat ramp that you can fish off and plenty of area down the at the mouth you can wander around. If you do have access to a boat then searching out rock faces and sticks that are in the water are a great place to start. Casting as close to this structure is important as bream don’t tent to stray far from their snags.