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The last red bream I saw caught came from one of the reef marks out off Newquay. Then suddenly,
they were gone. Not just thinned out, but to all intents and purposes, from my perspective at least, they
might just as well have been driven to a point of sudden mass extinction.
How could such a prolific offshore fish nose dive in so spectacular a fashion. Angler pressure was
mentioned, though if I'm honest, while I was particularly interested in catching them, with such good
wreck and reef prospects for all manner of other stuff around the West Country back then, I don't think
too many other anglers were that fussed.
Then by pure chance one evening while chatting with Sid Pender down at Penzance, what may well
have been the cause, or at least a good part of it, suddenly came to light when he commented on an
incident involving a large Scottish commercial boat which was either a mid water trawling, or a partner
in a pair, out looking for mackerel close to the Runnel Stone. This boat brought in six thousand stone
of 'unidentified' by-catch which turned out to be adult red bream, pretty much wiping out the entire
breeding stock. In the twenty years following that incident, Sid caught just two red bream.
In the lead up to chatting through that body blow incident, the same
Irish Red Bream conversation also made mention of how the small local inshore boats at the end
of the mackerel feathering season would cut their feather rigs down in terms of
hook numbers, add pieces of mackerel to those that were left, and again around the Runnel Stone, have
a good couple of months hand-lining for red bream, which pretty much sums up arguably the best
outline terminal tackle approach for catching them.
I started off fishing baited feathers out over the Eddystone, but quickly realised that as versatile as this
approach can be across a very wide range of reef species, there were better ways of achieving a much
improved similar end.
Building on the feathers pattern, because let's face it, most terminal rigs are little more than variations
on a very small number of basic themes, we adapted the three droppers above the lead idea by using
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