Bream

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Black Bream are difficult to confuse with other species as the fish are very distinctive in shape, with a scaly black & silver body. The stomach area being silvery, and the top of the body near the dorsal fin being black scales.

Red Bream are not unlike Black Bream, the difference being their red colour.

The fish used to be found extensively in the English channel, as far east as the reefs off the Sussex coast and to the Newhaven wrecks. Fairly common around the Isle of Wight, the Channel Islands, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, though not present in the numbers seen prior to 1975.

The fish appear in early summer and stay until late September to early October. In recent years they have only been found in numbers around the Channel Islands.

Bream shoal best over shallow reefs. Places to look for here are definite vertical shelves, depressions, and scattered rising rocky pinnacles coming off the seabed. The shoals work through such areas cleaning out all the food before moving on. They are voracious eaters.

Common methods of catching both of these species is to use Mackerel strips on baited feather traces used for Mackerel fishing. If feeding well, it would not be unusual to catch several at a time.