I grew up catching bream on bait. A packet of prawns, a light rod and a jetty, and you'll catch bream – it's one of the best ways to learn to fish. But bream on lures? That's a completely different game. They can be finicky, frustrating and downright tedious to crack. And when you finally do figure them out, it's some of the most rewarding fishing there is.
On this episode of The Everyday Angler, I was on Port Stephens with Shimano pro team angler Jack Hemmond, testing the new Shimano Limitless rods. After lunch we ran down to a rock wall to see if any late-season bream were schooled up. The goal was simple: tick over five decent fish while the sun was directly overhead. It took us nearly two hours to find them. Once we did, it was a fish almost every cast.
This guide covers everything that got us there: how we found the fish, where they sit on a rock wall, the ultra-light tackle you need, and two completely different lure techniques that both caught fish from the same school.
Quick Links
Why Bream on Lures Is a Different Game
Bream are incredibly slow growing. A legal-sized fish has been around a while, and I reckon that makes them wise. They've seen plenty of lures, they know what a lure looks like, and they know what not to eat.
With bait, the food does the convincing for you. With lures, you have to trick them. That comes down to three things:
Presentation. The lure has to look like something that's naturally drifting or crawling along the bottom, not something being dragged through the water on a line.
Weight. The lighter your jig head, the slower and more natural the fall. Bream will often refuse a lure that drops like a stone.
Being in the zone. Bream on a rock wall hold in a very specific spot. If your lure isn't in that zone, you simply won't catch them. It really is that precise.
Get those three right and bream go from frustrating to fun.
Finding Bream: Seasons, Tides and Structure
The hardest part of the session wasn't catching the fish. It was finding them.
Understand the season. Generally speaking, in winter bream sit deep, and in summer they push up shallow. We were fishing in late September (a transition period) so they could have been anywhere. We didn't know if they'd be tucked against the rock wall, out in the deeper holes, or somewhere in between. That's why we searched for about an hour and a half before we found them.
Fish the incoming tide. When we finally found the school, the incoming tide was pushing in noticeably warmer water. You could feel it on the fish. I reckon that's no coincidence. Bream follow the food and the water they like, and a rising tide brings both onto the structure.
Use your side scan. This was the moment it all came together. Scanning along the wall, side scan showed a couple of hundred fish stacked up between the boat and the rock wall. If you've got side imaging on your sounder, run it slowly along the wall and look for clusters of fish holding off the rocks. It turns hours of blind casting into minutes.
No sounder? Read the wall. You can still find bream without electronics. Look for the features that make one part of a rock wall different from the rest: a point or a bend that deflects the current, a patch of whitewash, a drop-off close to the rocks, or a floating pontoon or moored boat nearby. Our first fish of the afternoon actually came from near a float, a classic spot for bream to hang. Work along the wall, make a few casts in each spot, and keep moving until you get a bite.
Where Bream Sit on a Rock Wall
Once you've found the school, it pays to understand how it's spread out. On our wall, the fish were holding in three zones:
The shallow edge. Right up against the rocks, in water as skinny as a foot deep. This is where I fished, casting as close to the wall as I could.
The drop-off. Two or three metres out from the rocks, the bottom dropped away. Jack worked this zone, just off the edge where the shallow fish and the deep fish meet.
The deep holes. Out in about six metres of water, there were heaps of fish stacked up, which we'd seen on the side scan.
The lesson is that a school of bream won't always be holding in one spot. If you're fishing with a mate, split the zones, try different depths, and figure out where the most active fish are sitting. We caught fish in all three.
The Gear: Go Light or Go Home
Bream on lures is a finesse game, and your outfit needs to match.
Rod. A light, sensitive spinning rod is the key piece of kit. You need a tip soft enough to cast tiny jig heads, and a blank sensitive enough to feel the bite. We were fishing the new Shimano Limitless, and the range includes lighter 1–3kg and 2–4kg models that are made for exactly this style of fishing. A light, crisp blank also cushions your line, which matters a lot when you're fishing as fine as we were.
Reel. A 1000 to 2500 size spin reel with a smooth drag. When a good bream hits the drag on light line, you want it to run, not jerk.
Line. We were fishing 4lb leader. That's not quite dental floss, but it's not far off. It would break very easily, and that's the point. Bream are line shy, and light line lets your lure fall and drift naturally. Pair it with a light braid main line so you can feel every touch.
Net. On 4lb, a landing net isn't optional. I got complacent early and tried to lift a fish into the boat. It was a risky move, and I'd tell anyone else not to do it. That's what the net's for.
Jig Heads: The Lighter the Better
If there's one secret to this session, it's the jig head. I was fishing 1/30oz — about 0.9 grams. I've never seen a jig head lighter than that, and I don't think BCF stocks one.
Here's why it works. With a jig head that light, the soft plastic just wafts down with the incoming tide. It barely looks like there's any weight on it at all. To a bream, it looks like a little bit of food tumbling naturally down the rocks, not a lure on a line.
The trade-off is time. That little plastic takes a long time to reach the bottom, and you have to be patient. Some of my bites came while I was literally just shuffling the lure, waiting for it to settle.
Matching weight to the conditions. As a rough guide:
1/30oz to 1/24oz – very shallow water and light current, right up on the rocks
1/16oz – a good all-round starting point
1/8oz – deeper water or stronger current
Let the conditions decide. If you can't get near the bottom, go heavier. If the bream are refusing your lure, go lighter.
Technique One: Shallow Soft Plastics
This was my approach, working the shallow edge with a small soft plastic on that 1/30oz jig head.
Cast up-current. This is the most important part. If you cast down-current, your lure just gets swept away. Cast up-current instead, and let the lure drift back down with the tide. It looks super natural, exactly like food being carried along the wall.
Leave slack in your line. Cast as shallow as you can — mine were landing in about a foot of water — and let the lure sink without touching it. As soon as you start pulling on the line, you pull the lure away from the wall and out of the zone.
Shuffle, don't hop. Once I think the lure is on the bottom, I just shuffle the rod tip back. It looks a bit uncoordinated, but it's deliberate. Small movements of the rod tip give the plastic a bit of life while keeping it right where the fish are, for as long as possible.
Pause and watch your line. Bream often eat a lure as it falls or while it's sitting still. Watch where your line enters the water. A twitch, a tick or the line going slack can all be a bite.
Technique Two: Deep Vibes
Jack took a completely different approach, and he caught just as many fish.
He tied on a little 40mm soft vibe and fished out in the deeper water, around six metres, targeting the fish stacked up off the drop-off.
Cast up-current. Same principle as the soft plastic. Cast up and let the vibe flutter back down with the flow.
Short, sharp jabs. Once it's near the bottom, Jack worked it with real sharp jabs of the rod tip, keeping the vibe just off the bottom. Each jab makes the vibe kick and flash, then it flutters back down, and that fall is often when the bream eat.
Keep it off the bottom. A vibe dragged along the bottom will snag up fast and look unnatural. Keep it hovering just above the fish.
Vibes have a couple of advantages. They get down quickly in deeper water, they cover more ground, and their vibration draws fish from further away. The trade-off is the trebles: they hook fish well, but take care getting them out so they don't end up in your hand.
Having two anglers fish two techniques in two zones is a great way to work out what the fish want on the day. We were both catching them.
When the School Fires Up
Once the school switched on, things changed fast. It was a fish nearly every cast, and the fish were getting bigger.
Here's the interesting part: when the bream are fired up, they stop being so fussy. I'd started out fishing super light. Once the bite was on, I could step up my jig head weight and still keep catching them, which meant getting my lure back into the zone faster. Jack's vibes were very productive, too.
So start light when you're searching for fish and trying to convince them. When they're competing and feeding hard, you can step up and fish faster. And always cast straight back to where you caught the last one. Where there's one bream, there's usually a school.
Handling Your Catch
Bream are a slow-growing fish, so every good one is worth looking after.
Use a net. Especially on light line. It's easier on you, the fish and your leader.
Mind the spikes and the trebles. Bream have sharp spines along their back, and vibes carry trebles. Get a confident grip behind the head, and use pliers to remove hooks.
Be quick. Get your photo, then get it back in the water.
Know the rules. In NSW, yellowfin bream have a minimum size of 25cm, and there's a combined daily bag limit of 10 across bream and tarwhine. Limits vary between states and change from time to time, so check your local rules before you head out. Releasing the big breeders keeps the fishery firing.
Your Bream on Lures Checklist
Keen to give today's adventure a go? Stock up in store at BCF by screenshotting the products we used in today's episode, or head to bcf.com.au.