Saltwater Boat Angling — December 2017

I

t is now forty-three years since Brian Reynolds

caught his remarkable red bream of 9 lbs 8ozs 12

drams off the Dodman Point fishing from George

Pearce’s Osprey out of Mevagissey which set a

record that could well remain so for all time as the red

bream is now virtually absent from British waters.

The tide had just started its down channel run when

the fish picked up a strip of mackerel on a 2/0 hook.

The tackle was specifically for bream and on such light

gear all the advantages lay with the fish. It dashed about

all over the place and the captor recalled the rod bucking

violently as the fish ‘bounced’ a most distinctive

characteristic feature of both the red and black bream.

Its surface display was spectacular and half a dozen times

it was worked within a foot of a wide-mouthed net only to

dash off at high speed. The hook was in the corner of the

fish's mouth which made Brian anxious as the hole in the

soft membrane could mean the hook would come out.

A final flurry and the bream was coaxed over the net rim.

Two hours later it was weighed on the quay at Mevagissey

where a large crowd of holidaymakers had gathered to

see the ritual. Cornish records show that a British Record

bream of 7 ½ lbs was caught at the Hatt Rock off Fowey in

1925 and in 1939 Brigadier J.A.L. Caunter who would in

1953 form the Shark Angling Club of Great Britain, had a

fish of 6 lbs 3ozs fishing the Hands Deeps Reef.

Only one other red bream rivals Reynolds’, it weighed 9

lbs 6ozs and was taken in August 1963 off Southern

Ireland’s Valentia. Its capture as with so many others, the

superb fish taken in Irish waters went unnoticed and

nothing was made of it in the British press, but it remains

the Irish National Record.

The red was once a mainstay of reef and wreck fishing off

Devon and Cornwall and 5 lbs was considered to be

specimen weight. The top reef marks included the

Eddystone, Hatt Rock, The Manacles and the Bishop Rock

Reef off the Scilly Islands.

Saltwater Boat Angling 35

Red bream records

Brian Reynolds with

his extraordinary

red bream of 9 lbs

8ozs 12 drams

A pair of 5 lb fish from

a mark South of the

Eddystone.

Brian Reynolds’ immense red

bream of 9 lbs 8ozs 12 drams

Mike Millman describes a British record which will probably never be broken

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