I understand that the bronze bream grow a bit bigger than the silver one's?? Well i had a good (1st ever) match yesterday, and caught a 6lb2oz silver bream, which i was well chuffed with but i don't know how good that is for a silver bream, anybody know how big they can get? Well i had a half decent bag-up yesterday, handfulls of skimmers and small mirrors but lost a double figure common at the net right at the death....arrrrgggghhh!!! The winning weight was 139lb6oz anyway!!!

Its very unlikley it was a silverbream being that size, silver bream record is a couple of pounds. Most likely it was a normal bream with very little colour due to living in water that is very coloured

alright...i see...it was very silver though....i can't remember even a hint of bronze on it....should of got a picture really....had darker fins.....which i know is normal but it wasnt as black on top of its body as other bream i've caught....so you think it was just a plain and uncoloured bream...oh well...thx neway!!

There's a good article with pictures at http://www.fishingmagic.com/news/article.a...26&v=3&UAN=3214

Still a nice fish Odd. I would have loved to have caught it. Well done.

Last I heard the Silver Bream record was open to claims over 1lb 8oz. (I think) Highly unlikely it was a true Silver. Some of these commercials do have very lightly coloured Bream and Tench, probably due to the water being very murky, as Bad says.

Right...fair enough...just in a book of mine they said that bronze bream were the larger of the two...but didnt have a picture of a silver fish or indeed any records set or anything....but thanks guys....it didn't give any sort of fight...like the time i caught a carrier bag spinning for pike....just a dead weight....then i hooked into what i thought was another big bream straight afterwards yesterday, didnt make any runs or anything....got him to the surface and it was a bloody big common!! He caught sight of me and then went off on 1...broke me off after a few minutes of playing him...just as i thought he was ready for the net and i was about to slide him over my net.....splash...tail goes and lost me hook to em.....b*****d!!!

There is a fishery near here which claims to offer silver bream.

Those who have caught fish upwards of 1 lb 4 oz are wannabe silver bream record holders and claim they are silvers.

Those who haven't caught such fish claim the bream are bronze skimmers.

The dispute got a bit heated.

Rather unwisely I mentioned to the management that the pharyngeal teeth of silvers and bronzes differ, and I knew how to dissect them out.

Next thing I knew I had a bream carcass thrust into my hands and was told "show us then" - in front of an audience of both silver and bronze supporters.

So I had to upset some of them

Dissected out the teeth - two rows

"Bronze have only one row - so it not a bronze" I said.

The bronze supporters streamed away like the supporters of a home side losing 5-0 with ten minutes to go, and went home to make wax effigies of Vagabond and stick pins in them.

I also had to tell the other side the truth - the second row of teeth were very small, so the fish might be a silver bream, but I couldn't rule out the possibility that it was a silver x bronze hybrid. Such hybrids might well show a vestigeal second row.

So the silver supporters in turn went home to make wax effigies of Vagabond and stick pins in them......

Nice try anyway!! The picture of a silver in Dave's link has red fins, is that normal too?

Fin colour in bronze bream varies quite a lot - some have pinkish fins - so colour can be misleading. Since the expansion in number of commercial fisheries and hatcheries there are a lot of mongrel fish out there!

Years ago, when dealing with "pure" silvers and "pure" bronze, experienced anglers who regularly caught both could tell them apart at a glance.

WickerDaves link refers to the bronze and silver scale counts challenged thirty years ago by David Carl Forbes.

Textbooks STILL (even one published as recently as 1992) give the scale-count values that David Carl Forbes felt were wrong.

I was indirectly involved in that discussion at the time, and feel DCF could well have been right.

As I discovered - even looking at pharyngeal teeth can be inconclusive (and it means the death of the fish!)

The only certain way is by comparing the DNA profiles - but that is time consuming and expensive - and is there anyone sufficiently interested to do it/pay for it ?

[ 25. April 2005, 03:41 PM: Message edited by: Vagabond ]

Very interesting post by Vagabond.

I think that like Crucians finding and confirming true silver bream will become harder and harder.I also feel that many "silver bream" recoed waters are a bit suspect.Why? well have you ever noticed that many of them seem to produce lots of fish around the record size.Cant think of any other species that can be found in any water in any numbers like this that are close to record size can you?

Ive caught Common/Bronze Vream that haver been very washed out and silver well over 6lbs.Just depends on the water clarity.River Saone in France is a good example.There I have never caught a Common Bream that was "bronze"!