THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

the end of the trip, still with no black bream to my credit, I decided that I would do something about it,
which fortunately was shaping up to be achievable a good deal nearer to home. Mid Wales in fact.
It seems that having bypassed the remainder of the west country and south Wales in respect of
swimming over what appeared to have been suitable ground in places, black bream had decided to set
up shop in Cardigan Bay.
Yet another example from a whole line of similar incidents where fish push northwards into new
territory, seemingly ignoring potentially suitable ground as they go, when the ultimate goal of their
journey, which presumably is finding something better, is never guaranteed.
Yet still they do this, as have the smoothhounds into Scottish waters and the trigger fish in the Heysham
nuclear power station intakes. A fact which never ceases to amaze me.
Aberystwyth and Aberdovey were both starting to make their name as black bream hot spots during the
1970's, which despite all the ills mentioned previously that have befallen the species, continues to be
the case, though no longer as this species most northerly outpost.
Picking up on what I said earlier about ignoring heavy reefy ground along the north Devon, north
Cornish and South Wales Coast in favour of pressing on, you can't help but wonder what it is that really
drives a species northwards in this way, motivating it into pioneering mode.
The reefs off the south Cornish coast
are in many ways a mirror of those
along the north coast. Then you
throw into the equation the fact that
while we did catch blacks out from
Looe, it was just the odd one mixed
in amongst so many reds.
So were the reds simply beating the
blacks to the baits through shear
weight of numbers. I think not. The
answer to that one lies in the
evidence, with still only small
numbers of black bream out there
long after the red bream population
spectacularly nose dived.
Aberystwyth Black Bream haul 1970’s
There had to be another factor, which it you reject water temperature on the basis that Cardigan Bay is
quite a bit further north than the English Channel, only really leaves terrain preference, and it is this
that appears to be the most likely candidate.
Along the Susses coast, the preference is not for heavy ground per se, but for areas of more mobile
loose material such as gravel adjacent to chalk reefs into which the males can excavate a nest for
spawning purposes.
Cardigan Bay also fits this particular requirement very well, because it has several extensive fingers of
'reef' which are actually loose stones and other rubble, supposedly the remains of long since deposited
glacial moraines.
A glacier is for want of a better definition a river of ice. A long narrow ribbon which builds where the
snow falls, gravitationally creeping slowly towards lower altitudes, which generally means the coast
and ultimately the sea.
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