Difficult to confuse with other species. A deep bodied fish with a sharply sloping forehead, small head, eye and mouth. Carries sharp and pointed teeth along the jaws for prizing food from the rocks. The wrist of the tail is broad and powerful.

The only confusion may arise with the red bream, but this has a longer body shape, the head is more blunt and slopes gently along the forehead down to the upper jaw.

COLOURATION
A mainly grey/blue back shading to silvery sides and paler belly. Male fish go darker along the back and head, occasionally sporting vertical dark bands or blotches.

The black bream

Odd fish show off Milford Haven in west Wales, but the real mecca for bream is Cardigan Bay and Caernarfon Bay as far as the Menai Straits in North Wales. Occasional fish have been reported from the Isle of Whithorn area and from Luce Bay in southwest Scotland, but these are the exception and very few and far between.

You never here of black bream being taken from southern Irish waters,yet the ground towards the fastnet Rock and up the west coast suggests that the fish should be resident. maybe it s just that the weight of anglers is so low and that few of these bother to fish with bream tackle and techniques.

BREEDING SEASON
Spawns from mid May through to early July along the reefs of the English Channel, off the Cornish coast, and especially over the shallow reefs of Cardigan Bay in Wales. A nest builder like the wrasse, but favouring sand and gravel patches depressions amongst boulders and rocky reefs. The male guards the eggs until they hatch. From then on the small bream form schools over the nest area for the first few weeks before venturing on.

HABITAT
Seeks out rocky ground, patches of boulders and rubble, but especially shallow reefs that work out at angles from the shore such as the Kingsmere Reef off Littlehampton, or Patches Reef off Aberystwyth and Sarn Bwch at Aberdovey. Can also be found close to inshore wrecks in deep water and will cross clean sandy ground on their way to new rough ground feeding areas.

DIET
Is a catholic feeder taking mostly shellfish from the rocks, but also small sandeels, worms and even tiny crabs.

SEASON
Shows simultaneously in the English Channel and off the Welsh coast about late April, but it can mid May during colder springs. Peak numbers occur during June and July when the fish are closest to shore. They remain until the equinoctial gales occur during late September and early October, then disappear moving southwards. The more northern travelling fish take until late June or July to reach their destinations, but still stay into October if the weather is mild.

SHORE FISHING

ARE BREAM RARE OFF THE SHORE?
Bream are not a regular shore based catch in most areas, but this is more to do with anglers being preoccupied by other species, rather than the bream not being present. If the boats in your area catch bream, then a carefully selected and suitable shore venue in the same area will, sooner or later, produce a bream for you.

MARKS AND FEATURES
Bream will move close in to the deeper beaches such as Chesil in dorset, the Channel island beaches, Hurst Castle in Hants, and Pwllheli Beach in North Wales. These are examples, but there are many other excellent shore venues that hold bream that nobody ever fishes for.

From the open beaches aim to fish close to or onto shingle banks and patches of rougher ground. Take notice of any debris on the seabed within casting range such as small wrecks as occurs at Chesil Beach.

The black bream

WEATHER
The best opportunities are during calm spells with just a gentle sea swell and no wind. Rough seas keep the bream offshore. Daylight hours give fish, but peak catches occur during the dusk and dawn periods, especially if these coincide with a newly flooding tide.

Fishing in the mid day period, try to fish under an overcast sky without any sun if the water is shallowish. On steeper, deeper beaches the sun doesn't really have a major affect on the catch.

TIDES
From open beaches, either shallow or steep to, try only the bigger spring tides fishing from dead low water through to high. Very few venues produce fish on the ebb unless the water is over 30ft deep.

Occasionally, bream can be contacted from rock stations, but the ebb and flood will both produce, though expect bites to die as the tide flow eases. neaps can fish just as well as springs in this deeper water.

TACKLE
You'll need true 5-6oz casting rods for this fishing as the bream tend to be mostly at a longish range. Reel line though, can be reduced to 12lbs, but keep the casting leader to 50lbs minimum.

RIGS
The best rig is a clipped up two hook type. This needs to be about 30" long with a bead trapped swivel set in the middle of the rig taking one hook length and another bead trapped swivel placed at the base close to the weight. Use a size 4 rolling swivel at the top and size 3/0 Mustad Oval Split Ring to take the weight. The bait clips are mounted on the rig upside and should be placed between the top hook length and the rolling swivel, with the lower clip placed between the two trapped swivels.

Rigged like this you'll gain a few yards on the cast, but more importantly the small baits are compressed into the bend of the hook during the cast maintaining reasonable levels of presentation.

Hook lengths need to be about 15" long and from 25lb line. The best hook pattern is again the Mustad 3261BLN Aberdeen size 2-4.

BAITS
The same fish strips, lug, rag, cockles and crab work just as well from the shore, though crab and sandeel can often pick up the slightly bigger fish.

TECHNIQUE
Nothing fancy! If the ground is cleanish, then allow the bait to roll and locate the holding grounds using an unwired lead. If you have other anglers near you, then stick with a wired lead, but experiment with casting distances. Fishing like this means that the bream, for once, will hook themselves.

As the tide flow eases, cast as far as you can and then retrieve the bait a foot at a time with short pauses in between. This causes the baits to flutter up an down which will help attract passing fish.

BOAT FISHING

MARKS AND FEATURE
Bream shoal best over the shallower reefs that work their way out from the shore. Places to look for here are definite vertical shelves, depressions, and scattered rising rocky pinnacles coming off the seabed a few feet. The shoals work through such areas on a set beat until all the food has been cleaned out. The depths over such ground may be as little as 20ft, even less, but the fish are not put off by this.

In deeper water, again it's the rock pinnacles that will hold the fish around their bases, but sometimes bream work along the edges of shingle banks and will cross from one rock mark to another over cleaner mixed ground and will still take baits.

To emphasis this, it's always worth fishing a single patch of rougher ground, however small, that is surrounded by sand. If there is enough food to hold them, the bream will be condensed over such ground and eager to feed resulting in big catches.

Small inshore wrecks and close to shore concrete constructions will also have their head of bream. Some large specimens show from the deep water wrecks laying in upto 300ft of water, but these tend to be members of small schools carrying upto maybe a dozen fish all over the 3lb mark.

It's worth remembering that bream are often concentrated in very small areas, sometimes the shoal will be all packed into an areas roughly 30yds square. Fish outside this and you'll think the area is devoid of fish.

TIDES
Over deeper marks with a reasonable tide run, then the bream feed best, or should we say, are more densely shoaled during the smaller neap tides to the mid sized tides. Spring tides over this ground will tend to produce far less fish, but those that are caught will tend to be of a larger overall size.

Over the shallow ground, again the neaps will fish okay, but now it's the middle sized tides with their comfortable run of tide that suit the bream best. Very big spring tides will tend to shoal the fish up tightly in sizeable depressions and on the downtide side of the reefs where the tide run is broken and less strong.

Slack water periods will see bites fall away. Peak feeding times are when the tide is running well through the middle flood and ebb tide spell. On spring tides the early flood and ebb will fish better than the stronger middle hours of the tide.

Bream will lift higher off the seabed as the tide run eases, but be tight to the ground during periods of peak flow. AS you'll see in the paragraphs on rigs, this last point is important for keeping the bait in the feeding zone.

WEATHER
Bream are not really affected by changeable weather. They'll continue to feed through calm, sunny days, overcast rainy ones and are not put off by building seas. However, over the shallower reefs rougher conditions may force the fish out further into deeper water where the seabed is less affected by the swell and the same applies, say in west Wales where the water is unpolluted and very clear. The amount of light entering the water makes it easy for predators like tope that feed on the bream to spot them and this pushes them out into deeper water and rougher ground for protection.

TECHNIQUE

BOAT HANDLING
Whether you're aboard a charter boat, or on your own dinghy, anchoring exactly right to put the stern just uptide of the chosen mark, especially in shallower water, is the make or break to getting the best catches.

You need to use the tide to drop both the baits scent and the bait itself backwards into the fish. Get it wrong and try to position the stern over the mark and like as not the bait will be pushed over the fish by the tide and beyond them.

Anchor well uptide and then let off spare anchor rope until you get the position just right. If bites die away, try letting a few more yards of rope free and you might just pick the shoal up again.

GROUNDBAITING
You'll enjoy far more sport if you draw the fish into your immediate area by using groundbait.

The best mix of groundbait is to mince up mackerel or other fillets and add in some animal feed bran and pilchard oil. Aim for a really well minced up mix which disperse downtide in a cloud with just a few free floating tidbits to excite the fish.

I believe Atracta Frozen Baits also do a pre-mixed groundbait mix which is ideal. Being frozen when put into the water it takes it's time to melt releasing a controlled stream of scent downtide for a long period.

It's okay to put the groundbait down with the anchor if you haven't got too much anchor rope out. If you're using lots of rope, then the groundbait will pull the fish past the boat nd reduce your catches.

The best way to put groundbait down is off the bow using a heavy weight to hold it in the tide. Make a basket from metal mesh and put the groundbait into two onion bags inside the cage. The onion bags slow the release down and the cage stops fish ripping the bags open and prematurely releasing all the mix.

TACKLE
You need only a spinning rod casting upto a maximum of 2ozs in most areas. The rod needs to have medium fast tapered action and should not be an all through type of blank. Some stiffness in the tip is essential to allow bites to be struck at speed. Add a small multiplier or fixed spool reel loaded with 8lb line and you've the perfect set up.

In deep water and fast tides you may need a rod taking upto 3ozs, but more than this and you'll over gun the hard fighting blackie.

RIGS
Bream, as we said before, rise in the water as the tide slacks off, but are close to the seabed when the tide is running. The rigs need to be instantly adjustable to allow us to constantly alter the depths at which the bait sits.

Use a small plastic boom like the Avis type using lengths of supple telephone wire to lock the boom into position. The wire is twisted round the mono and is easily slid up and down to adjust the height that the boom fishes.

The rigs body needs to be from 25lb line and 8' long with a size 10 rolling swivel as the main line connector. Slide on a small bead, then the boom and another bead trapping them with the telephone wire. At the base of the rig tie in a small loop using two overhand granny knots. Tie a weak link of line, say 5lbs to the loop and add the lead to this. A snagged lead is then lost without sacrificing the whole rig.

The hook length needs to be upto 18" in a running tide, but cut it down to 12" towards slack water. This should be from 10-12lb line ending in a sharp Mustad 3261BLN Aberdeen size 4, or better still the excellent 34021 carp pattern from the same company in the same size.

This design allows the boom to be positioned from seabed level to 8' which is the usual band the fish are feeding in.

BAITS
Cut fish strips or squid strips about 1" long and .5" wide, longer strips of the same width may pick out the odd bigger fish working amongst smaller ones. Other good baits are cockles, lugworm and ragworm, strips of sandeel, and small chunks of peeler crab. Mussels can also pick up though the bream find it easy to rip these off without getting hooked.

TACTICS
Experiment with the size of weight finding one that will just bounce off downtide slowly without fully loosing contact with the seabed. This keeps you a tight line which is essential for hitting fast, now you see it, now you don't, bream bites.

Bream rattle the rod tip three or four times and you need to lift into the fish fast, or they'll be gone. As a rule, bream do not hook themselves. This is not lazy fishing, you'll need to work hard and concentrate to hit just 60% of the bites.

If the lead rests on the seabed and no bites comes, lift the rod tip to get it moving again. Bream hit a moving bait better much than a static one.

Make absolutely sure that your reel has the clutch set to give line will below the breaking strain of the line. Bream want to run and crash dive repeatedly. If you try and hold them you will snap more off than you land.

Small fish upto a pound can be swung in on the line, but anything over this size should be brought in to a landing net for security.

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