Bream bed fishing lasts all summer long
The approach of a late-spring full moon phase means bream fishermen throughout the Carolinas will flood to their favorite bream waters with high expectations of limit stringers of bull bream.
They’re usually rewarded with excellent fishing for several days until they clean the beds out. Then most begin the wait for the next full moon phase to repeat the process. Or they begin searching for isolated groups of bream in non-bedding habitat.
Fishing bream beds is a major fishing event in the Carolinas. And landings that have had minimal use for months now have waiting lines to launch boats.
Conventional wisdom teaches that bream bed fishing is best a few days prior to the full moon and a short period afterwards. But is that the whole story?
Many devoted bream fishermen also believe fishing on the dark of the moon moves the bream-bedding needle in a positive direction with a spike in bedding activity. And they make bream-bed catches to support it.
But one Santee Cooper angler pursued the concept that bream bed fishing can provide uninterrupted success throughout the summer, regardless of moon phase.
And he’s developed a repeatable process and provable pattern that once bream bed fishing begins, it continues nonstop until fall.
Stacey Weatherford grew up in Cross, S.C. adjacent to Lake Marion and has fished the Santee Cooper lakes his entire life. Catching bull bream has always been a primary pursuit.
He said bed-fishing around the moon is prime time, but that doesn’t represent the full scope of the lunar-impact reality of bream-bed fishing.
Forget the moon phase
Weatherford has expanded his thinking over years of fishing and experimentation. He’s proven to himself, and those fortunate enough to fish with him, that once the full moon occurs in late-May or June, he can catch limits of bedding bream the remainder of the summer, regardless of moon phase.
“I’ve bream fished a lot of lakes in the Carolinas and beyond and found this pattern to be true elsewhere,” Weatherford said. “But on Santee Cooper specifically, once the full moon pulls bream onto the beds, I’ll find plenty of bream on the beds anytime I go fishing the rest of the summer. It’s the gift that never stops giving.”
Weatherford said it’s not scattered fish on random beds. It’s fast-paced action that anglers would expect on the full moon.
“But this technique involves diligent effort and reasonable restraint,” he said.
The first step is finding lots of beds, and that begins with knowing and locating the right bottom substrate and depth. His home base is out of Blacks Camp on the Diversion Canal, giving him easy access to both of Santee Cooper’s lakes.
“I’m not interested in finding one big bed and literally fishing it to death,” he said. “I search for hard bottom areas of sand and gravel from shallow water down to 10 feet deep.”
Weatherford said anglers typically find beds at Santee Cooper in shallow water down to the 3- to 4-foot depth range. But most overlook deeper water beds.
“I’ll find a lot of huge beds in deeper water,” he said. “These can be the real honey holes because they’re often not fished by others.”
Leave some seed
Weatherford employs side-imaging sonar to locate beds. Primary areas to search include sand and gravel bottoms along sloping points and along shallow flats that drop into slightly deeper water. He devotes on-the-water time scanning for beds to increase the number of active bream beds he can access.
“The more beds I have marked on my graph the better my odds,” he said. “Some anglers search until they find a bed or two then fish those spots repeatedly. The problem is bream beds can be totally fished out and likely won’t be rejuvenated the remainder of the year. I learned this the hard way.”
“After years of studying bream-bed fishing I’ve found it’s crucial to leave active bream spawning on that bed,” he said. “This allows the bed to recover quickly because actively bedding bream attract more bream on any moon phase.”
Weatherford said investing the time to locate multiple beds early in the season is a key. It provides the ability to enjoy fast-action on a specific spot but provides multiple targets so he doesn’t clean out a bed. He’ll finish the creel limits, if that’s the goal for the day, on other beds.
“The payback is I can return to that first bed and find the bed nearly full of bream again,” he said.
“If I catch all the bream on a bed, my experience is that bed is likely lost for the reminder of the summer,” he said. “With the right bottom substrate, bream will likely return to it next year. But leaving ‘seed’ bream on the beds has a dramatic impact on other bream filtering in within a few days.”
Don’t ignore open water
Weatherford said protecting these beds from over-fishing has another benefit. New bed colonies early in the season often start out small, maybe with 20 to 30 beds. If not over-fished the colony can naturally expand to 100 to 200 beds in only a couple of years.
“Those are honey-holes worth waiting for,” he said.
He fishes typical shallow water areas around grass, weeds and woody cover. But he also graphs a lot of open water.
“By fishing open water areas, I build up a base of multiple beds that aren’t pressured as much,” he said. “They typically receive less fishing pressure because they’re away from the recognizable landmarks on the shoreline.”
Weatherford employs light-tackle spinning and spincast rigs loaded with 8- to 10-pound test line and a No. 4 wire hook and small splitshot. He prefers an adjustable float that allows him to quickly change the depth he’s fishing.
“Live crickets and worms work great. Bluegills typically prefer crickets and shellcrackers favor worms,” he said. “Another advantage of fishing open water beds is they often have both bluegill and shellcrackers on them.”
Beetle Spins for bream
“If I’m fishing shallow-water cover searching for beds, I’ll often use Beetle Spins,” he said. “It’s highly effective and I can cover a lot of area quickly and effectively.”
Weatherford understands that an approaching full moon certainly pulls new bream to the beds in significant numbers. But he’s learned that bream come and go throughout the summer regardless of moon phase. The full moon phase injects vigor into the process. But panfish moving to the beds is a never-ending process.
“A graph image depicting a bed loaded with plenty of active, bedding bream occurs on any given day from June until September,” he said. “Using modern side-imaging technology to find my targets and restraint in terms of not over-fishing individual beds, I enjoy bream bedding all summer.
“Plus, I’ll finish the summer with more active beds, with more bream on them, than I had in June,” he said. “And that sets me up for next year.”
Scouting for bream beds is an important key
Stacey Weatherford invests plenty of time and effort searching for beds. This diligence pays off throughout the summer months in terms of limits of big, bull bream at Santee Cooper.
“Time spent prospecting for beds is time well spent and I may find multiple beds without fishing any until I’m through hunting beds for that trip,” he said. “Then I reap the rewards and catch bream while expanding my portfolio of bream beds.”
He said to use the best graph unit you can afford. Side-imaging is essential to his process.
Weatherford practices what he preaches and during a trip on a hot July day, on a first-quarter moon, he fished at least a dozen different beds and scouted a half-dozen more. All of these beds had active bedding fish brightly marked on the graph. While we could have likely limited quickly in the first couple of places, we side-image scanned the beds pre- and post-fishing and caught a reasonable number of fish then moved to another bed.
“When I’m already in good bream bed territory in terms of depth and bottom composition, I often find new beds as I’m moving toward locations I have stored in my unit,” he said.
This off-moon day of fishing was a perfect example as he found two new beds in open water in one bay, both loaded with fish on the beds. They’re now on his lengthy list of potential targets.
“The new generation of side-scan technology is the key and provides information I need for this process,” he said. “Side-imaging depicts the beds in a specific place and which ones have bream on them. This provides me a realistic number of how many fish I can take without over-fishing. I also enjoy seeing that bed expand and how it can become exponentially larger in ensuing years.”
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