Bream (Common Bream)

By Alex Clayton · Updated 23 October 2026

The same species that turns up as a palm-sized, silvery skimmer on a town canal has topped 22lb in a Cambridgeshire lake. That fish is the British record bream.

The bream fish most UK anglers catch is the common bream (Abramis brama): a deep-bodied, slimy, bottom-feeding member of the carp family that lives in shoals in lowland lakes, slow rivers and canals. Young fish are called skimmers or skimmer bream. Adults are known as bronze bream or slabs.

This guide covers identification, size and the record, finding shoals, the close season, and how to catch and handle bream. For the wider family, see our guide to UK coarse fish species.

Bream at a Glance: Key Facts

Everything you need to recognise and size up a bream fish, in one table.

Fact	Detail
Scientific name	Abramis brama, carp family (Cyprinidae)
Other names	Skimmer (young fish), bronze bream or slab (adults)
Typical size	30 to 40cm, 1 to 5lb (0.45 to 2.3kg)
Larger fish	Up to about 10lb (4.5kg) per the Wildlife Trusts; fish over 11lb (5kg) recorded by Fisheries Ireland
Lifespan	15 to 20 years
Diet	Bloodworm, midge larvae, pea mussels, worms and plankton, taken from the bottom with a downward-facing mouth
Predators	Pike, zander and fish-eating birds
Spawning	Late spring to early summer, once the water passes roughly 12 to 15C
British record	22lb 11oz (10.29kg), covered in the size and record section below

Sources: Canal & River Trust, The Wildlife Trusts, Fisheries Ireland.

Bream are shoal fish, so where you catch one there are usually more. The size you catch says more about the water than about your skill: some lakes are full of skimmers, others hold a small head of big, old slabs.

How to Identify Common Bream: Bronze, Skimmer, Silver Bream and Hybrids

You’ve just netted a silvery, flat-sided fish of a pound or so, and three people on the bank give you three different names for it. Getting it right matters if you log your catches or want to know whether you’ve caught a common bream at all.

What a common bream looks like

A common bream has a deep, flattened body with a high back. Adults are bronze with dark fins and a deeply forked tail, while juveniles are silvery. The whole fish wears a thick coat of slime.

Look at the mouth. It points downwards, built for grubbing food out of silt. In May and June, spawning males develop white tubercles on the head and body, so a rough-headed bream at that time of year is normal, not diseased.

Skimmers vs bronze bream

Same species, different ages. A skimmer is a young, silvery common bream. As it ages it darkens to bronze and fills out across the back, and anglers call it a slab.

Bream lookalikes compared

Feature	Skimmer (young common bream)	Adult common bream	Silver bream	Roach-bream hybrid
Colour	Silvery	Bronze to dark bronze, dark fins	Silvery	Varies
Body shape	Deep, very flat	Deep, high-backed, thick across the shoulders	Deep and flat, but a smaller fish overall	Tends to sit between a roach and a bream
Typical size	Ounces to a pound or two	1 to 5lb, bigger on some waters	Small: the British record is only 3lb 4oz (1.47kg)	Varies
Notes	The same species as the adult	Heavy slime, downward mouth	A separate species	Occurs where bream and roach share water

The silver bream is a separate species that never approaches the size of a big common bream. The fish that causes most arguments is the hybrid: bream interbreed with roach, and occasionally rudd, where they share a water, and the offspring tend to show features between the two parents.

If you can’t decide, photograph the fish side-on with its fins spread and compare it against our fish identification guide. Our pages on the silver bream and the roach cover the two fish most often confused with it.

How Big Do Bream Get? Typical Sizes and the British Record

Why do some websites list the record bream at 22lb 11oz and others at 22lb 12oz? Only one of those figures matches the published listing.

Start with what’s normal. These are the benchmarks commonly quoted by anglers:

Around 3lb (1.4kg): a typical fish on many waters
6lb (2.7kg): a good fish
Double figures: the mark most anglers treat as a specimen
20lb (9kg) plus: possible, but extremely rare

The British record common bream stands at 22lb 11oz (10.29kg), caught by Scot Crook in 2012 at Ferry Lagoon in Cambridgeshire, a syndicate water rather than a day-ticket venue. That is the figure listed by the British Record (rod caught) Fish Committee in its coarse fish listings, as transcribed by fishingvenues.uk, and the Canal & River Trust gives the same weight. The 22lb 12oz figure does not match. Records change, so check the Angling Trust’s current listings for any update.

Species	British record
Common bream	22lb 11oz (10.29kg), 2012, Ferry Lagoon
Silver bream	3lb 4oz (1.47kg), 2012, Gareth Evans, Mill Farm Fishery, Pulborough

For how the record has climbed over the decades, see our British record bream history.

Where Bream Live and How to Find a Shoal

The swim that gave up a net of bream yesterday can be dead today. Bream roam across big areas as a shoal, and once they’ve moved on, no rig or bait will bring them back to you.

Where bream are found

Common bream are widespread in lowland England and rarer in Wales and Scotland, according to the Wildlife Trusts. Look for them in:

Stillwaters: lakes, gravel pits and reservoirs
Slow, deep lowland rivers
Canals

They favour soft, silty bottoms they can grub through for bloodworm and other larvae.

Reading the water

Bream give themselves away if you watch before you set up. The signs to look for:

Rolling fish at dawn and dusk, often a slow, porpoising roll that shows the dark back
Patches of fizzing bubbles where a shoal is feeding on the bottom
Coloured or clouded water, because bream stir up sediment as they feed
Deeper or wider areas than the water around them

On a big stillwater like Windermere, I’ve found that finding bream comes down to watching for rolling fish early and late before committing to a spot.

Canal bream

Carl Nicholls, fisheries and angling manager at the Canal & River Trust, advises fishing early morning or late evening, once boat traffic has eased. He suggests shoals may hold every few hundred yards, with winding holes and junctions the hotspots. Boaters have priority in winding holes, so be ready to lift your keepnet out.

Wherever you fish, if you see bream rolling, cast just beyond them and feed sparingly.

Bream Through the Year: Spawning, Seasons and the Close Season

In England and Wales you cannot fish for bream, or any coarse fish, on rivers from 15 March to 15 June. Most stillwaters and canals stay open, which is where a spring bream session belongs.

Bream spawn from late spring to early summer, once the water passes roughly 12 to 15C, in shallow, weedy water. Spawning fish are preoccupied with breeding, so leave them alone even where the law allows you to fish.

Bream feed hardest in the warmer months and slow down as the water cools, often holding deeper in winter.

Water type	England and Wales position
Rivers	Closed to coarse fishing 15 March to 15 June
Most enclosed stillwaters	Open all year
Most canals	Open all year
Exceptions	Some stillwaters and canals have their own local close seasons, so check the byelaws

Source: GOV.UK, when and where you can fish. Check Environment Agency byelaws and your fishery’s own rules before you go, and remember that anyone aged 13 or over needs a rod licence in England and Wales: see our fishing licence guide.

The rules in Scotland and Northern Ireland differ and aren’t covered here, so check with the Scottish Government or DAERA. For the full picture, read UK fishing close seasons explained.

From mid-March to mid-June, fish for bream on an open stillwater or canal, and give spawning fish a rest wherever you are.

How to Catch Bream: Feeder, Float and the Best Baits

The biggest mistake with bream isn’t the wrong rig. It’s too much feed, which can spook the shoal and send it elsewhere.

The feeder approach

A feeder over a bed of groundbait is the default bream method. A method, open-end or cage feeder puts bait on the same spot each cast, and a soft quivertip shows the bites.

Use this as a starting point and adjust it to your water:

Hooks from about size 16 for maggot or caster up to a 14 for worm
A light hooklength of around 0.12 to 0.16mm
A feeder just heavy enough to hold bottom at the range you’re fishing

On Windermere I approach bream on the feeder by starting with a modest bed and topping up little and often, rather than putting everything in at the start.

Float fishing for bream

In deeper swims, use a sliding waggler or an antenna float on a longer rod of around 12 to 13ft.

Touch ledgering, feeling for bites through the line between your fingers, is the option when wind won’t let a float sit still. It takes practice.

Bait and groundbait

Bait	Where it works best	Notes
Worms	All waters	Use on the hook and in groundbait
Casters	Natural waters	Often the best bait on natural venues
Maggots	All waters	Dead maggots in groundbait stop balls breaking up too early
Sweetcorn	All waters	Listed by the Canal & River Trust for canal bream
Pellets	Commercials	Often outfish casters on commercial fisheries
Fishmeal groundbait	Commercials	Effective on commercial fisheries
Bread	Waters that allow it	Often banned at commercials, so check the rules

Sources: fisheries.co.uk, Canal & River Trust.

A simple session plan

Find the shoal using the signs in the section above.
Lay a bed of groundbait laced with worm, caster or dead maggot.
Fish a feeder or float over the bed.
Feed steadily, a little at a time, and resist overfeeding.
Handle every fish carefully (see the next section).

The same swims and baits often produce tench in summer.

If you’re new to bream, start on the feeder on a stillwater, where it’s the more forgiving method. Save the float for deeper swims on calmer days.

Handling Bream: Slime, Unhooking Mats and Keepnets

The slime that gives bream their nuisance reputation is the fish’s protective coat. Your job is to leave it on the fish.

Wet your hands before you touch the fish.
Unhook on an unhooking mat and keep the fish low over it.
Support the body rather than squeezing it.
Use a keepnet only where the fishery allows one, and don’t overcrowd it.
On canals, lift the keepnet out of a winding hole when a boat needs to turn.

Keep a towel for your own hands, not for the fish. The bream needs the slime more than your trousers do.

A bream handled wet and low over a mat goes back in the condition it came out.

Frequently asked questions

Is a bream a carp?

No, though they're related. The common bream (Abramis brama) belongs to the carp family, Cyprinidae, but it is a separate species from the common carp. It has a deeper, flatter body, heavy slime and a downward-pointing mouth. See the identification section on this page for how to tell it apart from its lookalikes.

What is a skimmer bream?

A skimmer bream is a young common bream: silvery, flat-sided and usually weighing ounces to a pound or two. It is not a separate species. As it ages it darkens to bronze and becomes a slab. The silver bream, by contrast, is a different species that stays small, with a British record of only 3lb 4oz.

Do I need a rod licence to fish for bream?

Yes, in England and Wales. You need an Environment Agency rod licence to fish for freshwater fish with a rod and line, including on private land. Juniors aged 13 to 16 need a free licence, and under 13s need none. You can be fined up to £2,500 if you can't show one. Prices change each April, so check GOV.UK and our fishing licence guide. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own rules.

What is the best bait for bream?

Worms, casters, maggots, sweetcorn and pellets fished over groundbait all catch bream. Casters tend to work best on natural waters, while pellets often outfish them on commercial fisheries. Feed little and often rather than heavily. See the bait table on this page for where each one works best.