I have just enjoyed a cracking day's fishing on the River Trent, catching big river bream - and the stuff that worked its magic for me was Sonubaits' F1 groundbait.

I was on a match that formed part of Barnsley's practices for the Division One National and I was lucky enough to draw peg 7 on the Weir Field at Holme Marsh. I ended up with 19 fish for a weight of 81lb, which was good enough for second place in the match.

I mixed the Sonubaits F1 groundbait 70-30 with a little brown crumb, as I also believe that big bream like to eat breadcrumbs.

I fed chopped worm and casters through a 45-gram open ended Korum feeder and fished with half a dendrabena worm, tipped with two red maggots on a PR39 hook.

The hook is a new design which has the strength of the PR38 and the offset eye for better hooking, but also boasts a fine barb.
The rod was a 12 foot Preston Competition Feeder rod with the new Preston Pro max Power reel line in .25mm diameter.

I was casting around 50 yards out and on only my second cast the rod was nearly dragged in as a 4lb barbel accepted the hookbait.

I then went on to catch 17 bream in the first three-and-a-half hours before the shoal vanished, though I picked up one further bream in the last five minutes.

Why do I use F1 groundbait where bream are concerned? It works, it's as simple as that!