In 2014, I spent 18 fishing days catching 41 breams. Of which 13 were caught on lures. In 2013 by contrast I caught 74 fish for 20 fishing days and 10 out of which on lure. I must admit flyfishing was not so successful this year - the blame is on the unusually wet summer.

Having fished two whole years my understanding of this game has attained a certain height. So much so I do not worry about fly patterns anymore - I trust my crabs more than anything else - and fish nearly the same stretch in certain tides only.

One fresh finding of the year was flyfishing potential for yellow finned breams at night. They are close kin of black breams and have strong preference for bait fish rather than crustaceans on which black breams are normally more focused. We often catch these yellow finned brothers while seabass fishing but not as the main target.

It was pure accident that I noticed their abundance in my neighborhood rivermouth. Will try to study more on this new target in '15.

Another event worth a special remark is the invasion of blue water fish into Seto inland sea. In late September we spotted the presence of Iwashi (small, pilchard like fish) and the rest is easy!!

This Blue runner aka Buri was about 80cms and just a touch shy of 6kgs. Interestingly enough, some fish definitely preferred small poppers while others were eager to nail down big plug or even a popper. Endless potential of coastal waters Japan.

- Next

We also went out for a few day's of Snapper games. Using rubber jig, we tease Snappers out of the depth in the range of 30-60 meters. Seto inland sea is one of the most productive Snapper field.

Sayuri managed to catch & release this trophy fish of 63cms.

October is the months when Ayu starts their spawning migration. If timed with typhoon floods, predators run up the river to devour hapless Ayu floating down. But the river this season was lowish and not powerful enough to produce a drama. We had to patiently wait

While seabass didn't really take off, Breams were more cooperative in hammering our plastic offerings. Sayuri caught and released this fine fish, 48cm.

On other games

Of course we visited Kohchi for Mahi Mahi games. In '13 we hooked up (and mostly lost) giant fish in excess of 150cms. We couldn't run into such giants this year but had a big fun doing tug of war with superb fighters of the Pacific.

It was then that I bumped into a fellow fly angler for the first time in this field. He lives in Tokyo but comes to fish here, and has been doing so more than 10 years! And he too admitted I was the first fly angler he bumped into here.

We instantly swore brotherhood over a lunch together. He had a lot of interesting stories, findings and techniques. While some of them only underlined my own observation, there were many others new and surprising to me.

Spring is a good season to target larger specimen. On this day I managed to nail down a handsome fish of 46cm.

The unstable weather lingered on till August. In normal years we worry about drought. But not this year. Dams were full, rivers were high. We had to seek different game suiting the wet condition.

One interesting phenomenon was amazing congregation of breams in the brack water. Unlike seabass, breams seem to come into rivers for no obvious reasons. They won't bite. It always took a lot of finesse and patience to tease these fish into taking a micro popper.

In September the summer came at last. The air was dry and the sky blue. Sight fishing condition, finally.

The water temp was still in high twenties and breams quite cooperative too. On average I was able to catch 2 breams per day in the autumn round.

The best bream season in 2014 had its troubles too - the foul weather. Many of the great bream tides were spoiled by drizzling rain and gloomy dark clouds. A frustrating thing to drive all the way to the water only to find the glaring surface making sight fishing impossible.

That said, there were some better days such as July 19th - I had 8 fish on, catching 5. The biggest one was this jet black tailer, 47cm.

The temperature rises in May. Once the water warms up to 20c, activity of breams soars.

I had a pleasure to host my long time friend and one of the greatest steelheaders alive, Sinchan. It has been a good while since he picked up a singlehand but it didn't take long before he too got trapped in the excitement of sight fishing games.

The water temperature was still lowish and breams showed some reluctance to take flies. But with careful presentation and teasing, both Sayuri and I managed to catch our first bream of the season.

The trouble is our little one who had become 2 years old. She now enjoys beach combing so much, creating huge mess to her parents.

On Bream Games

In pure sense of game fishing, sight fishing for bream is the best - in my opinion anyway.

In late April we welcomed the beginning of our 3rd season with great anticipation.