Furnace Mill Fishery

Description and habitat of Bream (Abramis Brama):
Adults have a bronze coloured body with dark, sometimes black fins. 'Skimmer' is the name given to young bream which are silver in colour.  Bream have a very deep body which is quite flat with a covering of protective slime.  They can often be found in large shoals favouring deep, slow or still water.  Bream have been known to live to between 20 and 25 years.

The bream has quite a small head with a protruding upper jaw, a forked tail and an anal fin that is longer than the dorsal fin. Small bream are sometimes mistaken for the silver bream which is smaller than the common, or bronze bream, and is silver in colour with red anal and pectoral fins.  The average size for a Common bream is 12 to 14 inches but the british record fish measured a massive 27 inches in length with a girth of 26.5 inches and weighed in at 18 lb 9 oz.  It was landed by Kerry Walker in a lake in Norfolk back in 2001.  Large bream are often referred to as 'slabs' or 'dustbin lids'.  Here at Furnace Mill Fishery we have lots of bream in all the pools and they happily move around feeding on the bottom.

Tactics for Catching Bream at Furnace Mill Fishery: 
Match anglers like bream because they are a shoal fish and so increase your chances for catching more.  Large catches benefit from a good carpet of bait as it encourages the shoal to hang around for a while, once hooked it is important to move the fish away from the shoal quickly so that the remaining shoal does not spook and move away.  An open-end feeder is a fairly good approach with a hook length of 18 to 24 inches, once the feeder reaches the bottom reel in the slack line and then pull in the same as your hook length so that the hook is now lying over the feed.  If ledger or feeder fishing the bite will be noticeable by the pull round of the rod tip, if float fishing you will see the float slowly disappear.  When trying to locate a shoal of bream look out for areas of discoloured water as when feeding they will stir up a lot of mud which releases gases that carry to the surface.  Early morning or approaching dusk seems to be a good time to target bream as they move into the margins as the sunlight fades.  Bream are not known as a fighting fish and normally come to the net with little resistance. 

Bream spawn between May and June and have been known to interbreed with other species.

Baits allowed at Furnace Mill Fishery for catching Bream:
 Furnace Mill Feed pellets, bread, worms, casters, maggots and sweetcorn.

For details about purchasing Bream please see the Fish For Sale page.