CHAPTER X 

 BREAM 



THE " great old bream," as this fish is familiarly called in 

 the Broads, is a bottom-feeder a real, rootling, pig-like 

 bottom-feeder eating the " soil " at the bottom of deep holes ; 

 for he too likes deep water, especially in winter, for it is 

 warmer there. Should you examine his stomach, you will 

 find a black, tarry-like substance weed and mud. 



Bream, too, keep in shoals the large fish keeping in shoals 

 to themselves, and the small fish doing the same. The bream 

 collect for rudding in similar places to the roach, but, as a 

 rule, a few days later, though at times both shoals spawn 

 together, and all the remarks on roach spawning apply to 

 bream spawning. Some old fishermen of the district main- 

 tain stoutly that the rudd is a cross-breed between the roach 

 and bream, born from their commingled spawnings ; others 

 aver as stoutly that the " bream flat " and " white bream " 

 are nothing but young bream, and try and convince you 

 by assuring you they have never found " full " white bream, 

 "but that I must leave." 



Upon a still, warm day you may peer into the liquid 

 depths and see the old bream working on the bottom, 

 wriggling and rootling in the mud, clouding the water 

 with silt till you cannot see them, though they keep on 

 feeding, working from side to side, their noses under .the 

 mud, as you may tell by the ever-thickening water, as they 

 hollow out the bottom. Some say they are hunting for 

 worms ; but I have never seen aught but the black, tarry, 

 muddy sort of soil aforesaid in their stomachs. 



They, too, feed mostly of a night, though they feed by 



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