I decided to try a new venue in Sussex's Furnace Fishery over the Christmas break, and while we had to break the ice, it didn't stop me from winning a 25-peg open match with 22lb 14oz of skimmers - and Sonubaits F1 groundbait was a vital part of my attack.

The ice was two-and-a-half inches thick and I managed to cut out a hole which allowed me to fish 10.5 metres out.
The venue averages four feet deep, so I rigged up a 4 x 12 Preston PB8 on .11mm Powerline, with a .74 Preston Exceed hooklength, finished off with a size 20 PR32 barbless hook. All the shot were spread over a foot of line, starting six inches from the hook, with a string of number nine shots, an inch apart.
I decided to feed two swims, one with two satsuma-sized balls of groundbait for starters (my positive swim), and the other, what I called my negative swim, with one similar sized ball. The groundbait contained a few dead red maggots.
I started on the negative peg where I cupped one ball of groundbait which, incidentally, was mixed 80-20 with a small amount of Sonu Dark Supercrush, to darken it off a touch.
After 20 minutes I got a bite on single dead red maggot, and a skimmer came to the net. Bites started to come more frequently so I looked at my more positive swim and I got bites there, so refed the negative peg and caught three skimmers from my positive peg before refeeding it and switching to the negative peg, where I stayed for three more fish.
And that's how I worked the peg all day, rotating and carefully refeeding to keep the fish coming slowly but surely.
The hookbaits were either dead red maggots or a single dead red maggot and a single dead pinkie combo. I have a theory that bream prefer dead maggots to live ones, as it takes far less effort for a bream to eat a dead maggot. Also, if you feed dead maggots into your swim, you know where they will lay on the bottom, whereas if you feed live maggots into a swim you don't know where they are after a couple of minutes. If uneaten, they can bury into the mud on the bottom or wriggle out of the swim.
And one final question to answer. Why Sonubaits' F1 groundbait, why do I choose it? Simply because bream love that sweet fishmeal taste. They can't get enough of it. To prove my point, I returned to Furnace again over the Christmas and New Year period when we had a mini-thaw, and I notched a third place with 22lb 8oz, a catch that comprised 34 smaller skimmers. I adopted pretty much the same tactics as on my first visit, and I can't grumble about two payouts in two trips to a new water!