THE BREAM. 147 



namely, very dark fins, head and mouth small, but the back 

 (shot, as I said, with gold and mother-o'-pearl) glittered when 

 taken out of the water as though phosphorescent ; the scales 

 were small, round, hard, and as smooth as glass, without any 

 superabundant slime on them; the sides and belly were 

 silvery white. They were all about one size, the smallest 

 was a trifle over two pounds. I cannot remember taking any 

 bream either before or since that were so beautifully marked. 

 Carp bream are generally found in sluggish waters, they are 

 very fond of a deep quiet hole that has a sandy bottom. Old 

 anglers on the Trent, when they are on the look-out for a 

 bream swim, watch what they suppose to be one very 

 narrowly, early in the morning or late at night, because bream 

 in warm weather will rise up to the surface, and when they 

 do rise they leave a large bubble on the surface. In suitable 

 holes bream are sometimes congregated together in very large 

 numbers. There was a few years ago a famous bream hole a 

 short distance below Newark ; when the fish were " on," a 

 good bag of bream was almost a certainty from there, but one 

 day the hole was netted, and upwards of two tons of fine 

 bream were taken out of it, and since then scarcely any fish 

 have been taken from it. I have noticed that bream are 

 sometimes very roving in their habits, swims that contain 

 quantities of bream one week becoming tenantless the next, 

 as far as we could make out, and we have found them again 

 in places where we never supposed any bream to be. Bream 

 spawn in June, and during this operation each female is 

 accompanied by three or four males. These fish are found 

 in rivers, lakes, and ponds, but I believe the Bedfordshire 

 Ouse is the very best bream river in England, its deep 

 sluggish streams being exactly suited to them. The Broads of 

 Norfolk and Suffolk contain vast quantities of fine bream, and 

 the Trent has some good ones in many of its deep quiet holes. 

 This fish will sometimes attain to a very great size. I have 

 seen them taken from the Trent when they have scaled seven 

 and eight pounds, but such are by no means common, four or 

 five pounds being a good weight. Although I believe it is 

 put on record as a fact that a seventeen-pound fish was once 

 taken from the Trent, I have a cutting from the Fishing 



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