Canal Silver Bream — Gongs

'My tactic for them will be to try next for chub and perch knowing there's a more realistic chance of finding such elusive fish by not trying for them at all...'

You may remember those prescient closing words from two blogs ago? I wasn't kidding. This is silver bream in canals we're talking of where in my locality finding them is simply a matter of pot luck. On occasion I'll catch one or two (but never yet three...) and then lose sight of them for the next week, month, or year. They are not rare, exactly. Not threatened. They are of least concern in that respect. But it seems impossible to angle for them specifically and do well at it anywhere but at certain still waters where you might easily take more in an hour than I have ever caught in 8 years fishing the Coventry Canal

So I began a campaign this morning for my first canal chub. Never seen one. Though they are known to live not so very far away from home at a place I have never fished except for zander. I took two rods for the job. I don't know what bait is best for them so for starters I thought I'd use what I would use for them on rivers. So I took a heavy meat rod just in case a carp came along instead — on rivers I would use the same outfit just in case of barbel. And a light bread rod because that might catch me the other smaller but just as desirable species too.

But the boat traffic was appalling despite foul weather so the meat rod saw very little use and got no bites when it was. The bread rod though, finally received attention in one particular place, so concentrating on that I retired the other for good. 

It was a good decision. I don't mind fishing two rods if action is expected to be slow or there's a long wait for large fish but can't abide it when one rod is very active. I thought the bites far too twangy to be from proper chub — though they might be from chublets — but suspected yet more skimmer bream and when I hooked the first and saw a small grey fish coming in I thought of chucking the bloody rod after it...

But then it flipped over flashing its brilliant flank and showing a pearly underbelly with two pairs of nice pink fins attached. Oh yes! It may have been a small example but was exactly what I 'hadn't' come for — my first silver gong of the season.

Now I hoped for others. A brace or better. Hopefully twice the size or more. But two or three would do. Next fish was a small roach but next was another smaller silver. And then the swim just died. And it never recovered. A twelve ounce roach from a nearby spot rounded things off. 

Once again silver bream had appeared from nowhere and vanished to somewhere in the blink of an eye. I suspect, but don't know, that they swim in very small shoals and are great travellers roaming here and there for feeding grounds. I couldn't feed to keep them. Too many boats passing by for that. 

I dropped into the Marina entrance swim on the way home hoping for silver bream by sheer chance having caught four from the peg in the past. I got four for ten pounds in half an hour. Good fishing, but the medals were all bronze ones I'm afraid

Like a Virgin...

Dave Fowler, Martin Roberts and the Lesser Spotted Bankswooper (Ballivus rara)

50 years an active angler I've been asked to produce a rod license just twice in all that time. The last occasion was at Bury Hill, and actually, thinking back I never got to actually produce because Martin Roberts and Dave Fowler stole the thunderous import of the moment chitchatting the swooping official into such a state of utter submission that he ignored me utterly and in the end walked away denying the rare honour of waving it under his nose. 

On the first occasion I didn't have one, in fact I was a license virgin who'd never ever considered he'd be required to hold one at such a tender age let alone lose his unblemished criminal cherry by such an act of buggery. 

Marched from the fishery I was then summoned to Brentwood Magistrates Court where the magistrate pretty much laughed the bailiff out of court admonishing for him wasting court time over such a paltry issue, then fined me £5 and awarded £5 costs. 

Those were the days, eh?

That was 1974, though, and me just a teenager. Forty years on and things are rather different with non-possession or fishing during the close season carrying a maximum penalty of either shed loads of money or in the case of celebrities, serious career damage and ignominy in addition to shed loads of money.

Once bitten, though — twice shy. I may have come away relatively unscathed from my first punishment which was akin to having a ruler whacked rather lightly across the knuckles by a headmaster going through the motions of punishment but without meaning it, but I never forgot from that moment on the necessity of never fishing again without that slip of paper in my wallet. So, Martin was to pick me up at five, and, I applied for my license at 10 minutes to, took note of the reference number just in case, then, off we went to Warwick Racecourse ressy for a spot of fishing.

It's a pretty little lake, triangular in shape, and full of fish. Quiet and peaceful it is too.

A couple of lads on the far bank sharing the same swim fishing for carp were chatting away merrily...

"Oi lads...turn the volume down..." Shouts Martin.

We then proceed to talk across the bush dividing our two swims every bit as loudly as they!

There was nothing much to shout about in the sluggish early season fishing. A brace of crucians for Martin, a small tench for myself and a fair number of silver bream between us both. I did lose a good fish though. Pulling steadily toward the safety of the bush without ever deviating in its determination to go in the one direction only, eventually overpowering the light float tackle it got where it wanted to be, snagged firm, and stole my hook. An eel perhaps?

Then swooped in a master angler who proceeded to fish his chosen peg without a care in the world for bailiffs and their little pocket notebooks, court cases, fines and costs and whatnot. Didn't even have the wherewithal for the day ticket...

Canal Silver Bream — The Early Bird

Dawn fishing in summer is wonderful isn't it? The most romantic of all fishing experiences ever committed to print, it appears in every good book on the subject of coarse angling because there's nothing to compare. Mind you the conditions have to be just so for it to work — cold overcast or windy weather are not going to cut the mustard, I'm afraid. As a literary device it has to be conducted during a balmy spell of dead still anticyclonic weather with bolt clear skies overhead and below there must be a certain kind of billowing mist, not fog, rising off the water. Only then do we have a recipe for romance.

Approaching Bridge 11 Coventry Canal pre-dawn

Getting there by car and fishing out the boot is no good either. You have to walk at least a mile or peddle a bike six or more, in the dark, and with the rod strapped to the crossbar because arriving full of expectation right at that time when the north eastern horizon begins to glow is everything and that's only increased by the physical act of doing it under your own steam.

I knew just by opening a window on the world of midnight that thing were going to be just so by 3am and that's why I stayed awake just to arrive at the right time, because if I'd slept I might have missed it. I don't know if it makes any difference to the fishing though. There's a great deal written that it does but I find it hit and miss, sometimes the best time of day, often dead flat, nevertheless there's something electrifying about that first cast into a sud-flecked mirror surface that cannot be bettered.

It made not a jot of difference. My patent pending home-made night fishing waggler with its easy-to-see plain white peacock body and red chemical light attachment cocked and stayed cocked. Only when artificial light was no longer necessary did it finally slide away. Not the obligatory tench of dawn fishing legend and lore, nor the hoped for silver bream I'm afraid, but a nice big bronze one instead.

There's romance lost then!

Full daylight at sunrise improved matters when a few more bream were banked including one fish that makes up for the lack of what I went for because it is at least half a silver bream — what I reckon has to be a 'genuine' hybrid with its distinctive silver bream head but bronze bream body.

You might want to take a good look at its head if you're confused about what are the defining characteristics of true silver bream. That's what the head does look like with its big bulbous eye positioned almost at the top of its skull and very close to the end of the snout. There's far too many small scales on the flank for it to be confused with a silver bream though, whose scales are far larger and fewer not to mention much brighter.

Here's a simple ready-reckoning field test for true silver bream and possibly their hybrids. Hold your finger over the eye and move it up and down so that its width appears exactly that of the eye. The eye (the eye socket actually) will fit into the length of the head from end of gill plate to tip of snout from four to four and a half times over but never ever more, the distance from eye to snout is always one eye width or less and the distance from eye to top of skull half an eye width or less and those rules hold true when they are quite small or even very large specimens.

This is not true of bronze bream whose eye will appear far smaller relative to the head size the larger they grow. I believe this is because the eye of a bronze bream reaches a certain maximum size long before its body ever does, rather as in human children, whereas the silver bream's eye continues to grow in proportion to the growth of the fishes body.

Imagine a full grown adult male of our species with eyes the size of Marty Feldman and you'll get the picture...

I packed down around 6:30 when I thought it unlikely I'd get a proper silver and besides, I had a new bird to take care of back home, asleep now snuggled up cosy and warm beneath a swan down quilt but who'd open her mouth wide and beg me just as soon as I got home and woke her...

Before I'd that pleasure though, there was silvery looking thing floating under the far bank brambles that had caught my eye. It might have been a white carrier bag but looked like a bloated corpse of what would be a mighty roach or even mightier silver bream. So, I took the rod along and proceeded to cast after it.

Eventually I snagged and teased it near bank where it was gingerly maneuvered into a carrier bag of my own punched with holes to allow water to escape. I flopped it onto the bank and proceeded to take scale counts and stuff like that because the head was that of a silver bream. However the body had become so bloated and distended with gas that it was the shape of no fish I know of and had split the skin both sides with the scales fallen away so I simply couldn't total them up properly. However, the complete count from dorsal to lateral line was possible to make and was correct...

Head of a silver bream — body of a who knows what?

Appearances were no guide. It was the hue of death with all the colour of its fins and opacity of its scales vanished leaving only the ghost of pearlescence behind. Nevertheless I took a couple of scale samples home because when weighed it was exactly two-pounds eight-ounces, and if a true silver would be a leviathan at 85% of the British record for the species.

I don't think it is though, but can't work out what else it might be. Don't even know what use the scale samples would be to anyone, but they're something else to clutter my mind with, I suppose...

When I arrived home the chick was asleep as predicted, but when tapped on her cosy nest shot out like a jack-in-the-box, mouth agape, showing the arresting pink of her throat, and demanded my full and immediate attention!

And being such an early bird, naturally, she got my worm.

Reservoir Mutts — Smashing Stuff (Pt1)

Second stint at the ressy started off just exactly where I left off last weekend. Same swim, same line, same bait, same plethora of bites. Those silvers do love their bread...

When I'd sorted my tackle about me and got around to actually striking bites rather than enjoying out of the corner of my eye the spectacle of a float plunging up and down like a misfiring piston, in they came one after the other, just as before, only this time the difference was the stamp of them. All little fish these and some greedy urchins with heads smaller than the bait they'd gobbled!

Reservoir Mutts — Equally Smashing Stuff (Pt 2)

Sorry for my sad broken rod, its tip dangling uselessly jammed against the float, I pushed the glass splint back in the splintered carbon socket and retired it to the quiver, perhaps for ever.

Gold, Silver... and Fast Running out of Shot!

The first sight on approach to a new water is always quite something isn't it?  Like catching a fleeting glimpse of breast through a diaphanous blouse, when I clap eyes on that branch-broken flash I tend to lose my footing, each step thereafter a hazardous guess!

Avon Roach and Silver Bream — A Reason to be Cheerful

I really thought the lean times were over when I first caught a glimpse on my way down the alley back of Lucy's Mill. The lovely jade colour that calls forth memories of times when any fool could have caught and the ever hopeful roach angler had red letter days, today the river looked just right for another.

River Roach & Silver Bream - God's Own Billiard Table

An exploratory mission this. To Oxford, and Old Father Thames. Judy went shopping, but I of course forwent the attractions of Bicester Shopping Village, and with a heavy heart denied the spurious pleasures of burning cash at the Altar of Mammon, went off light-stepping to a spot of fishing with half a loaf of Warburtons Blue instead.

Canal Silver Bream - Another No Show

Another morning chasing the elusive silver bream of the Coventry Canal saw an earlier arrival than I'd made for the previous session, but the same approach to the swim, which was to cast a disc of bread up the far shelf and see what, if anything, occurred. It was the same story. It sat there a minute, and then slid away. However there was no brace of silvers off the bat this time around, but the first of a succession of bronze bream.

Canal Silver Bream - Bloody Minded Fish!

Curious fish that they are, turning up in braces on consecutive casts just as often as singles out of the blue -- but for the life of me I cannot ever seem to manage a trio -- silver bream are the most infuriating fish swimming in my local canals.

This morning around 10 O'clock, I set off for the late morning feeding spell, which occurs between half past ten and half past noon in summertime, and especially in hot clear weather with bright sun, and for no earthly reason I can fathom. I was after roach, having recently had two different fish at one-pound, seven-ounces apiece from the spot where I was heading.

River Roach & Silver Bream - A Full House of Pain

Some time last week, perhaps Tuesday evening down the cut fishing with Norman, I became aware of a twinge in my leg. A kind of sharp ache in the joint between femur and pelvis. When I sat on my seat and then stood up, it would hurt a little, so I spent most of that canal session sitting on the grass. At home that night, it got a little worse and caused a restless night. By morning, My leg had seized tight and had to be manipulated out of bed, but I thought little of it. I'd overdone the exertions of trotting in a standing position off a rickety, half-submerged pallet on Sunday, and was paying now with a little muscle pain.

A Quest for Canal Carp — Sex & the Silvers

I thought I'd do the night. Get out after dark and fish through till dawn just to see what would happen, because I never have fished the canal alone those hours before, because you wouldn't, would you? All those nefarious characters roaming around slashing throats for a quid in the dark. Who'd chance it?

Silver Bream - Phew, what a...

Bummer! The weather, the weather, the flipping British weather! Just last Friday night I was sitting at a pit freezing my nads off dressed in full winter gear, seriously, the self-same apparel I wear when fishing in sub-zero temperatures, and this evening I'm going back to the same pit dressed in t-shirt and shorts. Crazy.

Silver Bream - Tomorrow...

'Till tomorrow' was how we left off after my last silver bream tale, and tomorrow comes around, inevitably. Would the silvers put in an appearance? Would they show? Would they fall to my rod once again, after an absence of almost an entire year, or pass me by as they have so often this spring, even though I know full well they are there, and have been for a month or more?

First cast, came the answer...

Silver Bream - Phenomenal Fish

Have I actually caught what the title suggests? Well, no. Quite the contrary. I have not. I'd like to have, but haven't. I've tried, but failed. Again.

I'm talking here about the real meaning of the word phenomenal, which means uncommon, or extraordinary, not grossly large. This fish, the silver bream, Blicca bjoerkna, is the most 'phenomenal' fish that swims in the canal. A beautiful fish to behold. Lovely looking they are, all bright scale and rose tinted belly, red in the fin and with puppy eyes that make them as cute as a fish can ever be. They come and they go, and no-one knows where or why. They turn up at certain places at certain times of the year and then vanish for the rest. They are, a phenomenon. For just one brief moment they can be caught, and then try as you may, you cannot catch another.

Canal Silver Bream - Ne'er Cast a Clout...

The Old English. What did they know about modern weather, eh? What did they know about global warming, Huh? Nuffink, I'll warrant. They did know a bit about old-fashioned weather though. It's an English obsession is weather, not that we get extremes that would scare anyone half to death, like the approach of a vast rotating thunderstorm dripping with tornadoes ripping homes and cows from their steads, shredding and chucking them in the air like so much confetti, and poleaxing people with shards of flying 4x2 and deadly green-stick fractured bovine shin bones.

Silver Bream - Round 2 of the 'Guess the Weight of the Stinky Fish' Competition

I went out looking for silver bream again last night, and found them. Well, I found two, but neither on the end of my line which remained ignored for two hours before I upped sticks and went elsewhere for the chance of a roach, knowing that they still weren't biting yet.

Canal Silver Bream - Are We There Yet?

It seems an age since I last fished the canal seriously. A few half-hearted and unsuccessful attempts at zander and pike, but hardly any roach fishing in a season of year when it throws up the largest fish of all, is all I have done with it since November last. That it's on my doorstep is neither here nor there, I just haven't wanted to fish it. The roach of Longford Junction just around the corner from home have not topped in the evening as they often do in winter and I've seen hardly any others signs of life anywhere else on my routine walks along the towpath with Molly. It's looked most uninviting, so I haven't bothered to try.

Silver Bream - No Sign of Either Or

Martin and I mounted a foray after a couple of target species up the Grand Union Canal Saturday last - he after zander and me after zander and silver bream at one and the same time. I was windy and wild but as with all canals in even hurricane force winds you can always find an area that is dead calm in which to fish, so our first port of call was to the windiest area of canal I have ever fished in my life because it looked so flipping zandery...

River Zander - Severn Quest - Big Fish Eat Little Fish

Fishing in places where monsters lurk has been an abiding theme of my year's angling so far. Two trips to Marsh Farm after outsize crucians provided me with an inevitable personal best for the species for in such a place as that fish over two pounds are the stamp so I would have been a very bad angler indeed to have failed to improve upon my previous best of one pound six. As it happened I beat it three times over in three hours and still failed to get past two pounds, five ounces. If they had fed all day long I might well have beat it ten times over in consecutive fish and ended up at four pounds something...

Then there was the hunt for a gargantuan record shaker/maker of a perch on Hanningfield Ressy, a trip where we failed miserably to even locate perch of any size let alone one to wake the record committee up for. That was fun though - messing about in boats always is - and them trout wuz ard bastads...!

When Steve suggested an overnighter after really quite large zander, I of course said yes, even though zander, a fish that I've found bites hardest through a crack in the canal ice, are not exactly a fish I'd naturally associate with high summer. Who cares when no less than four over mid-double figures have come from the river stretch responsible in the fortnight since the season began in mid June