Bream
The
Common Bream has a deep body with highly compressed sides and a downturned
mouth. Small bream or ‘skimmers’ are silver in colour, while the older bream
(above 1lb) become darker and the humped back becomes more prominent. They are
slimy to the touch and have 51-60 scales along the lateral line, and a long anal
fin with 24-30 branched rays. The maximum length they grow to is 60-65cm and a
maximum weight of 7.2kg. Bream generally are found in large shoals, especially
when young, favouring deep, slow or still water. The Bream can live to 20 - 25
years.
The UK record was broken in 2001 with a 18lb 9oz fish caught by Kerry Walker on sweetcorn, legered over a handful of free offerings a rod length from the bank. The bream had a length of 27inches and was 26.5inches in girth.
Their natural diet consists of pea mussel, water slater, ram's horn snail, worms (tubiflex), fly larvae, daphnia and plant fragments. Bream are found mostly in slow moving or still waters with a clayey or muddy bottom. Older fish keep over a clean bottom when feeding, moving to shallows at night. During the winter months they will group into densely packed shoals.
Bream can be caught on legered baits as they are predominantly bottom feeders. Baits such as redworm and castor can be used. Maggots, pinkies and chopped worm mixed with a groundbait provide a good feeding ground for a shoal.
Once the shoal begin to feed, and a fish is hooked, the fish needs to be pulled away from the shoal as soon as possible so as not to spook its neighbours. Large weights can be caught as long as the shoal stay over the fed swim – an open-end feeder filled with a groundbait mix will feed the swim consistently.