Most everyone likes to eat shrimp, Yes, a small percentage have shellfish allergies, and there are some knotheads around who say they can’t stand shrimp.
Even bream like shrimp, and here is our fishing tip for the day.
Bream fishing to most anglers in our neck of the woods is simple, and that is part of the activity’s appeal, that and the fact that bream are found everywhere and they are extremely tasty on the dinner table. Just buy a tube of crickets or a carton of red worms, and you are set for bream fishing.
An alternative is to stop by the grocery on the way to the lake and pick up a package of frozen shrimp.
Get the cheapest kind if you are frugal. Get small ones and not jumbos. By the time you get to the fishing spot, unload the boat and get on the water, the package of frozen shrimp will be at least partially thawed.
Hook a shrimp and get it in the water. A bream won’t mind a bit if the thing is still icy.
There is still another feature of this shrimp for bream. If things don’t go well, you can eat the bait. Try that with red worms of crickets.
We first heard about the “stop at the grocery for frozen shrimp to catch bream” topic from the late Homer Circle, one of the best fishing writers this country has ever produced.
We sat next to each other on a plane flight in 1974, and Homer had just moved from Rogers to Ocala, Fla. It wasn’t long after he served 15 months in a fill-out term as a commissioner with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
We acknowledge that people who call themselves “real” fishermen often curl upper lips at the topic of bream fishing in a conversation. It’s for kids. It’s for the unskilled or unknowledgeable folks. “Perch jerkers” is the derogatory term sometimes flung out.
Bream fishing is fun fishing. Most, maybe all, fishing should be in the fun category, but we know this is not the case. Put someone in a $60,000 boat rig and in a contest that may have a six-figure top prize, and you can see serious overshadows fun real quick.
Shrimp for bream is simply a case of availability. Bream will go after nearly anything that hints of nutrition. An old and productive bream bait is wasp larvae — when you can get it. Any sort of white worms from maggots to meal worms, wax worms and garden grubs are good for bream work.
We ran across a fisherman years ago who claimed he went bream fishing with four slices of bologna. The meat was for his lunch, but he peeled the plastic wrapper off each slice and used it for bream bait. Stayed on the hook real good, he said. This was a conversation in Texas, though.
Other fish will go for that frozen shrimp too.
If channel catfish are around, they may run off the bream to get to it. Drop the bait and hook without a bobber and let it sink to the bottom then raise it just a few inches. If it gets down past the bream, a channel cat is likely to grab it.
Would a crappie go for shrimp? We are guessing yes, but we have no first-hand experience to base this one. Will a largemouth bass go for shrimp? We think so. If it’s food, a bigmouth is likely to grab it.
This shrimp for bream technique can be adjusted. Bream fishing means small hooks, so a frozen and thawed shrimp can be pinched in half. Bream bait needs to be small.
The shrimp can be put on the bait from head to tail for more security than by just hooking it through the middle.
And bream season is coming up soon — if there is really a time of the year that you can call bream season.