BREAM... Not as docile as they look

They may plod and munch like a herd of cows but there’s more to bream than their meandering gait may indicate

OFTEN referred to as the fish equivalent of cows, bream may have a docile, shoal-loving image, but this hides the fact that they are among the most interesting of our coarse fish. Not only are they found widely across the UK (only the extreme South West and Highlands lack bream) but they are found in vast gravel pits, small pools and rivers in equal abundance. And yet catches by coarse angler can often seem to disappear for weeks or years on end, before once again being caught in numbers. All of this hints at the fact that bream are more enigmatic than we may presume…

Early survivors

Despite growing to a large size with doublefigure fish now found in many lakes and rivers, bream have a rather selective natural diet. From the point of hatching until they are a couple of years old, they mainly feed on tiny zooplankton. Each tiny invertebrate is picked from the water column by the small fish, which have very highly-tuned eyesight. Often the densities of zooplankton present in a venue can fluctuate widely. In some years, there may be ample to feed the young bream, but often the numbers crash in midsummer, and this can lead to a serious food shortage. Whereas roach and chub will switch to alternative food sources, bream have no such luxury and must continue hunting for meagre food supplies. In these years of famine, the young fish struggle to reach a size large enough for them to overwinter safely and the whole year class may perish as a result. As the fish grow and their demands for food increase, they switch to a very different mode of feeding upon bloodworm. Now they patrol the lake or river, often following predictable routes for weeks or months at a time, looking for areas of the lakebed rich in the tiny bright red fly larvae. Bream are able to determine the density of bloodworm present very quickly and will only stop and feed in areas where the amount of food is high. Once settled, they feed by sucking in mouthfuls of the silty lakebed, sorting the chironomids from the mud using the net-like leading edge of the gills, and then spitting out the inedible waste. Each large bream may consume many tens of thousands of bloodworm each day. Larger bream can adopt a more varied diet, with larger invertebrates making up a percentage of their intake, especially in gravel pits where the large amount of food can give them a plentiful supply. In deeper lakes the bream may often be found not close to the bottom as we normally think, but in mid-water. This is especially true during the day when the fish are seeking out warmer water, but may also be filter feeding on small invertebrates. This can explain why on some venues bream become very nocturnal for much of the time.

Waterway travellers

Some of the earliest radio-tracking and tagging projects were carried out using bream as the subjects in the rivers of the East of England. These studies showed that around a third of bream stay within a mile or so of the same stretch of river for much of their lives. Another third move around more freely, while the remaining third are real free agents, often moving many tens of miles. These movements can take anywhere from a few days to many years, but enable the bream shoals to expand their home range while leaving enough individuals in known good areas to guarantee the next generation. Over shorter time periods radio-tracking studies have shown bream can often move quite long distances, quickly, and often

“Bream have a much more complex life history than we normally credit them”

following a familiar path each day. Most commonly bream will begin to move upstream in rivers just on dark. Moving at walking pace, the shoal will continue upstream until they find an area rich with food. Here they will spend the night before moving back downstream just before dawn. For the angler looking for a big catch, knowing the swims at the top and bottom of these daily migrations can mean all the difference between catching a few fish and really bagging up. Bream are very much known to respond to heavy prebaiting, especially on venues where there are good numbers of medium-sized fish. This is probably because it is difficult for all of the fish in such large shoals to find

enough food to eat. Once again though, prebaiting is likely to attract fish when it is placed along their regular patrol routes, but don’t expect them to make detours to find it.

Territorial males

Male bream are often covered in hard white calcified bumps called tubercles. While other cyprinid fish also sport these tubercles, no other species develops them to such an extent as bream. On big, old male fish, the tubercles may be a permanent feature, although it is around spawning time that they become particularly prominent and can be very rough to the touch. Exactly what the function of this ‘body armour’ is can only be speculated, but may be linked to another surprising fact. Male bream can become very territorial around spawning time and will often be found staked out along a length of suitable bank defending a territory from other males. These territories can be anything from a few metres to tens of metres in size, and any male venturing in will be quickly forced out by the incumbent male. In this way the males can ensure that they have an increased chance of spawning with any females that enter their area. Perhaps the tubercles are part armour, part weapon, during this spawning ritual. Rather than the benign slow-moving and docile creatures that we often perceive them to be, bream are fascinating fish with a much more complex life history than we normally credit them.