It has been a long process but Kaj Busch is now confident that bream are the ‘real deal’ on fly.

Okay, I admit it—catching reasonable numbers of bream on the fly rod has been quite a challenge. Maybe that is because I have treated them as fill-in fish between trips to chase more exotic fish, or maybe they really are a bit tricky. When at home though, I do end up chasing bream fairly seriously on both hard-bodied lures and soft plastics. The results of those efforts have been amazing and the numbers of fish that now come in on a regular basis defies belief.

These results have not been achieved through any earth shattering mental gymnastics but rather from a lot of time spent on the water and just adding two and two together to keep on making four. A lot of little steps can take you a long way. Having applied the same tactics to my fly work on bream over the last few months, I can finally catch enough of them on fly to keep me happy. The difference between what I was doing twelve months ago and what I am doing now is not radical, it is just a progression, but the catch per day has jumped dramatically.

The main improvement in my fishing has been in flies. I now have functional flies that are easy to tie, attract bream under a wide range of conditions, and hook them reasonably well when they do take. My delivery system has improved a bit as well with the addition of some modern fly lines. I guess this is a well-worn theme in fly fishing and it is the key to catching many different species on fly tackle. Tie some simple, functional flies that the fish want to eat and then figure out an effective presentation, and you are going to have a ball.

Bream will eat any number of different flies and I guess everyone has a favourite. Until recently though, I just got too many knock-backs and half-hearted takes on flies. Sure I had some victories but the water is generally fairly clear where I fish along the NSW South Coast and for every one that ate my fly, I could see plenty that refused it. Admitting this is a bit like attending an AA meeting and telling the world you like a scotch or two. Again, finding a key was more good luck than good management, but if you try enough weird things, something has to work sooner or later.

POLARFLASH
Don’t tell anyone, but ‘Polarflash’ is the key to catching lots of bream. This stuff is a mixture of hair and something that flashes like a mirror. I use it to tie a fairly dense wing on my flies and you just about need to put welding goggles on before you look at them in the water on a sunny day. Most fly anglers raised on trout just can’t believe that a wily bream would go anywhere near a fly this flashy, but they not only go near it, they want to actually eat it! The best colour is definitely 2007 but 2008 will do at a pinch. The bad news is that I have tried about nine million other brands of flashy stuff that looks good until you show it to a bream. Most of the other styles of flash material either don’t attract the fish or they have bad curling and tangling tendencies when used as the sole winging material in a fly. The good gear is Polarflash and unfortunately I don’t have shares in the company. I hate that!

The actual fly pattern that works for me is dead simple and I guess it is just a Clouser or Crazy Charlie type thing with the Polarflash wing. I tie a simple unweighted bend-back version for shallow water and polaroiding in skinny water, a bead-chain eyed version for fishing down a metre or so, and a version with heavy dumbbell chromed eyes for deeper presentations. I have tied a few sizes but the number 4 is far and away the best.

The hook is very, very important and a Mustad 3261NPBLN Aberdeen is absolutely lethal for this job. Trust me, I have tried many other hooks but this is the one for a bream fly. Fly shops might not know much about this hook but general fishing shops do because this is the hook we use for soft-plastic lead head jigs. They aren’t that hard to find so persevere and get the right hook—it makes all the difference to hooking and holding bream on fly tackle.

I do tie a bright body as well on my bream flies with various colours of flashy chenille, but I haven’t noticed much of a difference in results with different body colours. A silver/white body seems to work about as well as anything. I generally finish the fly with bright red nail varnish that makes it look trendy and doesn’t seem to stop the fish eating it.

FITS & STARTS
Fishing the Polarflash bream fly is easy enough. Throw it in close to cover and twitch it out in fits and starts so the material pulses and flashes, or look for a fish and cast the fly close to it. If a bream sneaks up behind the fly, stop the retrieve and wait for him to suck the fly into his mouth. This is very important and is definitely a key to catching bream on both lures and flies. One good feature of Polarflash is that it is very soft in the water and when a bream sucks it, the fly can fold up and physically fit in the fish’s mouth.

When a bream sucks the fly in, you have a tiny window of opportunity in which to strike, because he will spit it out in a millisecond. Strike too soon and the fly will only be partly inhaled, too late and it will have been rejected. This is called fun. If the water is clear, you can see this tricky stuff happening, which is a real buzz. If the visibility is not perfect you can still see this fly flashing away at quite a distance even if you can’t see a fish tailing it. If the flash suddenly winks out during a pause in the retrieve, then it is a fair bet that a fish has inhaled the fly and an instant strike will often bring a solid hook-up.

I try not to complicate my fly fishing but some new fly-lines have definitely helped me to catch more fish. When fishing ultra small terrestrial patterns I have been using a 4-weight XPS floater—a very fine delicate line that fishes the small flies very well. For general fishing with the Polarflash bream flies a 5-weight GPS floater is ideal—this line has a fairly short, compact head and is magic for fast accurate presentations. For heavier flies I like the Wet Tip Clear line—this still casts well but gets the flies down just that little bit deeper. I have just started fishing some much deeper water with encouraging results, using a uniform sink 4 line. It is hard to believe that I am being so sophisticated with all these fancy lines, but I am greedy when it comes to fish.

THE REAL DEAL
Okay, so how many bream in a session is enough? Numbers aren’t all that important to most fly fishers, but in a developing fishery it is encouraging to know what is possible. Fishing with Ian Miller in my boat, our best catch so far has been 38 bream for an afternoon session. This was using the Polarflash flies and there were obviously plenty of fish to shoot at. Certainly 20 or 30 fish sessions have been fairly common. When things are tougher in estuaries with smaller populations, five to ten fish in a session would be more normal. Of course I still get skunked sometimes, but even that is kind of nice because the game just wouldn’t be the same if we won all the time.

Apart from being effective, I have no doubt that catching bream on fly is very enjoyable because recently I have taken some good fly fishers on bream expeditions. Without fail, they have been blown away by the experience and are now firmly hooked.

Will fly fishing for bream and other southern estuary dwellers ever form a mainstream part of the game in Australia? I think it will. Fly fishers who are already competent in other forms of the art will eventually try the bream game and many will be sucked in. More importantly, I am now seeing fly fishers who actually started their careers on bream, coming through as skilled anglers—a very exciting development. I can see a time coming when a group of fly fishers will be talking about the state of the prawn run, the exact grade of flash to imitate a whitebait, and the complexities of when to change from the floating line to the wet tip, with the same degree of animation and authority that their highland trout brethren would use when talking about a may-fly hatch.

It has been a long time coming, but hallelujah brothers, bream on fly are very definitely the real deal, one hundred percent.