146 BOTTOM FISHING IN THE NOTTINGHAM STYLE. 



CHAPTER IX 



THE BKEAM. 



THE bream is another distinguished member of the carp 

 tribe, distinguished because he is of rather a peculiar shape, 

 being nearly as broad as he is long. His back stands up a 

 good height, and his belly bows round to a good depth. In- 

 deed, I have a short cutting before me from a journal in which 

 'a writer describes a bream as being like a pair of bellows, 

 " the handles forming the head and the spout the tail ;" my 

 author, however, spoils his remark by adding, " they are like 

 a pair of bellows in flavour." Well, I know they are not 

 very good as an edible, but like a pair of bellows ! The scien- 

 tific name of the bream is Cyprinus Brama. There are three 

 sorts of bream in English waters, but the most common are the 

 carp bream or golden bream, and the white bream or silver 

 bream called by some bream flats. The carp bream is the larger 

 of the two sorts, and is not a very handsome fish ; it can easily 

 be recognized by any tyro, being very thin and also wonder- 

 fully broad. The fins are of a very dark colour, his head is 

 not out of the way large, and he has rather a small mouth, 

 when we consider the size of him ; his skin is very slimy in 

 a general way, but I remember taking two or three two-pound 

 fish, and they were as clean as a dace. This was in Septem- 

 ber, and I hooked them in a slight shallow stream. They 

 were very beautiful on the back, looking as though they were 

 shot with mother-o'-pearl and gold, while their bellies were 

 silvery white, the scales on their sides were smooth, round, 

 and hard ; in fact it seemed to me that they were a different 

 species of bream altogether, and I can only suppose them to 

 have been the third species, Ahamis Eugganhagii, or the 

 Pomeranian bream, which is a very scarce fish in Britain. 

 These bream had the distinguishing features of the carp bream, 



