Bream are typically 12 to 22in long (30 to 55cm), and 4 and 8lb (c.2 to 4kg). It’s a deep-bodied fish with flat sides and a high back, and its mouth is just a little undershot – useful when it’s digging for food. In adolescence they are silvery sided, but in maturity they darken to brown or grey on the back with golden brown sides. Fins are brown and grey.
 
Finding them
Bream schools inhabit deep slow moving rivers and nutrient-rich floodplain lakes, reservoirs, and flooded gravel pits – it’s keen on habitats with algae and muddy bottoms. During day it will be down low, but at night it’ll get more adventurous and move to shallower waters to feed. Keep an eye out for waters becoming bloomed with mud – there could be a hungry gang of bream at the bottom kicking up the mess.
 
Food and bait
Bream love bottom-dwelling insect larvae, worms, molluscs, and crustaceans. The down turned tubular mouth is ideal for feeding on the lake bed, as it helps the fish to dig for larvae, worms etc, but it can revert to filter feeding if the school has stripped the waterbed bare. Laying a barrage of groundbait on the waterbed can lure them in, where a hooked maggot, boilie, or similar should prove just too tempting to resist.
 
Breeding
Bream spawns in late spring and early summer amongst dense plant growth, mostly at night, and in shallow water. Yellowish eggs stick to the weeds.