COMMON
OR BRONZE BREAM 
Abramis Brama
Family Cyprinidae
Distribution: Found throughout most of lowland Britain, parts of Wales and Ireland.
Habitat:
A very common shoal fish found in most lakes, ponds, gravel pits, canals
and slow rivers.
Description:
Easily distinguished from other species, the bream has a very deep narrow
body with the tail fin being deeply forked, the upper lobe being pointed
and the lower one slightly rounded. The anal fin is very long reaching
from just past the mid-point of the belly to almost the tail. In spite
of being well scaled, the bream is extremely slimy.
The back is green/brown, slate coloured or even black in old age. The
sides are paler being grey/olive-coloured with a touch of bronze in maturity,
becoming darker and brassier with increased aged. The underside is buff,
white or cream.
Due to their shape, anglers give them the nickname of dustbin lids or
slabs.
Young bream, called ‘skimmers’, are bright white/silver, extremely
slimy and are often confused with silver or white bream, a different species
altogether.
Common bream have much smaller eyes than silver bream, 25-27 rays on their
anal fin, while silver bream have 19-21. see
technical stuff
British record: 18lb 15oz caught by Tom Huntley, from Bawburgh Lake, 2001
Bream are opportunist
shoal fish - they will feed from the bottom - up to mid-water and will
take a variety of baits, but respond particularly well to groundbaiting.
Large shoals of feeding bream stir up the bottom when rooting for food,
this results in gases being released which carry silt clouds to the surface
- so watch out for bubbles and discoloured water when trying to locate
your fish.
Moving in shoals, bream quickly clear the area of anything edible and
then move on, so if you’re catching bream, don’t be afraid to
give them plenty of freebies to keep them interested and in your swim.
Not the best of fighters, bream make the most of their deep shape and
tend ‘kite’ and thump their heads when hooked.
Baits
and Lures: Popular baits are maggots, castors, worms and bread;
either punch, flake or paste. Other alternatives are sweetcorn (in all
its varieties and flavours), pellets and mini-boilies
Whenever possible I add a little flavour to the maggots, to give them
an extra attraction, simple basic flavours, cream, vanilla, caramel, etc.,
all work and don’t cost a fortune.
If you can pre-bait, go for plain brown crumb with sweetcorn, casters
and chopped up worms added, a drop of your favourite flavour/additive
wouldn’t go amiss. Dead maggots are a good attractor - freeze some
overnight to kill them, before adding to the crumb, or try pouring boiling
water over them to ‘cook’ them - it just means they stay put
on the bottom and are more visible to passing fish.
If you have access to a food liquidiser - try blitzing a tin of sweetcorn
into a fine soup - it goes really thick and sticky - ideal for adding
to crumb.
Tackle:
Tactics for catching bream vary from venue to venue but a good start is
feeder fishing with a quiver tip rod.
At the start of a session fill your feeder with bread crumb, caster, corn
and maggot mix and cast out half-a-dozen times to get a ‘carpet’
of bait on the bottom. Try to be accurate with your casting, there’s
nothing worse than spreading your bait over too large an area.
Once you get into a shoal of fish, expect a few line bites - pulls, plucks
or tremours from fish hitting your line and pulling the tip round. Only
with experience can you learn to distinguish liners from real bites. On
hard waters I admit to hitting anything that moves the tip!
An excellent variation on ‘the tip’ is the Sidewinder, a bite
indicator that clips onto the rod, this enables you to fish with the rod
pointing straight at your bait, and is unaffected by wind. It is extremely
sensitive and well worth investigating.
Float fishing ‘on the drop’ will catch bream, but keep trickling-in
free offerings to keep the fish interested, in some waters bream will
take a bait just below the surface - and when hooked will leap clear of
the water like a trout!
Try
to unhook bream in the landing net, the slime makes a real mess on your
jeans!
SILVER
BREAM or WHITE BREAM
Abramis Bjoerkna Family: Cyprinidae
Not as prolific or
widespread as the common bream, when caught they are generally thought
to be immature common bream.
Fish weighing well over a pound are regularly caught, but because many
anglers assume they have caught a hybrid or a skimmer they don’t
bother to claim a record.
Difficult to tell apart when young, the two species have the same silver
colouring, but the common bream turns golden olive with age, while the
silver bream does not change colour at all.
The silver bream has bigger scales but less in number, a larger eye than
the common and its pectoral and pelvic fins are slightly reddish - not
dark like those of the common bream.
The two species, along with roach and rudd, interbreed freely, this results
in hybrids.
The hybrid can be a real ‘Heinz’ variety, with shape, colour,
number of scales etc., a mix between those of its parents. It takes an
expert to distinguish between a hybrid and a true silver bream.
British Record: Dennis Flack holds the British record for a 425g (15oz ) fish caught in 1988 from Grime Spring, a pond on his own farm near Lakenheath, Suffolk.
|
Common Bream
|
Silver Bream
|
|
|
Anal
Fin
branched rays |
23-29
|
19-23
|
|
Dorsal
Fin
branched rays |
8-10
|
7-9
|
 |
||
|
Lateral
Line
|
49-57
|
44-50
|
|
Scales
above lateral line (rows)
|
11-15
|
8-11
|
|
Scales
below lateral line (rows)
|
6-8
|
4-6
|
|
Pharnygeal
teeth
|
A
single row of 5
|
2 rows on each side
teeth on each side with 5 in one and on other |
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