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As Nick rightly says, there is no rig that is bream proof. That said, I can honestly say that I've never caught a bream on a chod rig, tench yes but not bream. Obviously not saying you won't catch bream on them but for some reason I never did and I used them a lot and on waters that held large shoals of big bream . Also as has been said above, what you feed and how will determine if bream become a pain. I know a few angler's that only use 22mm / 24mm baits and hardly if ever get bream problems.

Personally I never used a pop up bigger than 15mm on my chod, in fact usually a very buoyant 12mm but I'd still feed my normal boilie irrelevant of size of them. I'd certainly try and find weed that's a foot or more tall which in my experience the bream are less likely to feed on. That said, if the bream are the predominant species it may well be a very hard task to avoid them no matter what you use. Just remembered a mate who went over to double 22mm baits to avoid a load of single figured stockies that got put into the lake we fished. He totally avoided them and though his catch rate dropped a lot he only caught the better fish.

I think that there is no such thing as a bream proof rig, but how you feed can be the trigger. Small silver fish and bream are attracted to heavy baiting, especially with particles, pellets and groundbait. The more you bait the more interested they are. Bream tend to be vacuum feeders, they get onto food and they clear it up, and that includes the hookbait, no matter how it's fished, bottom baits and low lying pop-ups are especially vulnerable. To avoid them feed less, or try boilies only. Don't put any free bait in, and fish just PVA bags or stringers, or fish boilies where although you may put 100 (example) in, they are not so close to invite or become a feeding trigger. The other thing is bream tend to avoid the margins, preferring to feed out in the main lake. They can have particular patrol routes! Now saying that, I used to fish Ardleigh reservoir and you could catch bream and then the carp would come before the bream pushed them out again. I caught both bream and carp on baited spots, yet on Alton, I never caught a bream despite using loads of particles. My rigs on Ardleigh and Alton were simply line aligned knotless knotted snowman baits on braid rigs, nothing special.

My approach on waters with big shoals of bream etc is to feed 20mm boilie (no particle) with a blowback snowman rig, size 4 curve shank, 20mm bottom bait and 16mm pop up. I also like about 5 - 10mm between the hook and bait 👍

I fish a lake that has a large head of bream, I use 12mm pop ups, when on ronnies, I’ve caught a few, but when using hinged stiff rigs, I’ve never been bothered by them

It sounds like bream are the predominant species! Thinking back to my previous post, I forgot to say on Alton in one particular swim I was fishing double 20mm baits on line aligners. It was the bridge swim where I was tipping Vitalin and boilies off the bridge and fishing on that bait. I never had a bream from there. In fact I never had a bream unless I was fishing for them when I dropped bait size to single 12mm baits or sweetcorn and used groundbait, but that was on bream specific gear. If bream are that big a problem I'd actually not cast in a swim unless I could see carp were present, a preference for margins. It might be you need to fish pop-ups off the bottom, above the bream and their feeding level.

Thanks guy, I was fishing with a snowman 20mm bottom and 15mm top(foam inside to help balance the bait) that's why I'm thinking of going double 24mm I've already stopped with particles, crush and other small freebies. They've found the PVA bags no problem. I've had the things in all over the lake.

Current multi version, 25lb stiff end section to semi stiff braid.

Bet the walk for the car is more pleasurable lol. I could do with a fishing shed. Mines spread out abit. Most of its in the shed but there a fair few bits lying round the house. I've got my 2man bivvy under my bed lol