1 Acre(s)
Coombe Pool has a large population of bream, usually between 6lbs and 11lbs.
These fish are commonly found in a few large shoals which can provide anglers with great fishing if they can hold the shoal in their swim with copious amount of bait.
Locating these shoals is the angler's first challenge and they should keep their eyes open for large areas of coloured water which is often caused when a shoal has been stirring up the bottom for food.
Another common activity is rolling or 'head and shouldering'.
This behaviour, which is more common at dawn and dusk, is associated with feeding in many species and will give away the presence of fish.
Because the water is shallow at Coombe - generally only about four feet deep - the larger fish may also give their position away when feeding by having their backs or tails exposed.
Fishing for bream at Coombe can be extremely good, with bags of fish caught regularly to nearly 100lbs in weight, and occasionally to 200lbs when anglers get it right.
However, because of the size of the water, location of the shoals can be very difficult.
The key to success at Coombe is firstly to locate the fish and then to feed them.
There are no favoured 'bream pegs' as the shoals move around the lake depending on conditions.
Try and fish a windward bank, or anywhere where the water is coloured and stirred up.
Once a shoal is located, it is important to have enough bait to hold the hungry shoal in your swim for as long as possible.
If the food source runs out it is likely that the fish will move on.
Groundbait is usually used with lots of squats, pinkies, maggots, casters, hemp, sweetcorn, chopped worm and such like.
By using lots of food particles, the bream shoal will stay in the swim for longer as they search through the silt for food.
During winter the fish will shoal more densely and location becomes more difficult.
Smaller bream and hybrids often migrate towards the Smite Brooke in late winter and can regularly be seen from the footpath.
A lot of the smaller bream caught in the fishery are usually roach / bream hybrids, although silver bream have also been caught.
True silver bream are considered quite rare in England as much of their true genetics have been contaminated by cross hybridisation.
At Coombe Pool, several of the large breeding silver bream were used by the Environment Agency to successfully artificially spawn this species for the first time and thus allow stocking in other waters.
Due to the rarity of the fish, Coombe Pool is one of the few waters in England that gives the angler a realistic chance of catching a true specimen.
Fishing is often done at long range, usually by swimfeeder using either a swing - tip, quiver - tip or bite alarm.
The rigs are simple -a 3lb main line with the feeder on either a four-turn water knot or a standard loop set - up.
Experiment with the length of the tail, although three to five feet is standard.
Accurate casting is also a must at Coombe.
Casting can be made easier by incorporating a stop knot on your line for reference or alternatively using the bait clip on the reel as a casting stop -although heavy lines are required for this approach.
Feeding at this range can be tricky and several anglers use either bait boats or bait scoops to get large quantities of groundbait out to the hookbait.
Hookbaits can be anything contained in the ground bait mix, though it is usual to use small red worms or maggots.
Care should be taken when using keepnets for big bags of bream, two or more nets should be used for large catches.
Also because the lake is quite shallow, care must be taken in the positioning of keepnets.
As a rule, try and position keepnets in deep water that is well shaded to avoid stress to the fish and use unhooking mats for specimens or larger fish, especially on the hard ground of the dam wall.
Popular pegs are on the Dam Wall bank are numbers 1 to 7 and on the Woodland bank numbers 1 to 25.
However, anglers are advised that fishing the Woodland bank involves a fairly long walk.
Whichever bank you choose, they all respond to the same methods.