Saltwater Boat Angling — December 2017

The history and

future potential

S

alcombe’s affinity with the gilthead bream has

been further enhanced by the 11th UK record

fish being caught there. So far, five have been

landed from boats and six from the shore.

Salcombe’s record history for this spectacular hard-

fighting fish, stretches back three-and-a-half decades and

shows the gradual increase in weight that's taken place.

The latest, a fish of 12lbs 3ozs, was caught by Rob

Wheaton on October 6th 2018, a supremely successful

Plymouth-based specimen hunter, who has previously

caught them to well over 6lbs.

Boat:

1983 5lbs 3ozs (King)

1988 7lbs 12ozs (King)

1989 9lbs 8ozs (Simcox)

1991 9lbs 15.5ozs (Bradford)

2015 10lbs 2ozs (Simcox)

Shore:

1977 6lbs 15ozs (Solomons)

1990 8lbs 6ozs (Smith)

1995 10lbs 5ozs (Carr)

2015 10lbs 7ozs (Carter)

2017 12lbs 3ozs (Wheaton- Record being claimed).

The current UK Record List has eight species of bream, all

of which originate in the Mediterranean. As time passes,

and the seas warm up, other species that have already

moved north and reached the Bay of Biscay, are likely to

move into the lower English Channel and maybe further.

Cornish Naturalist, Jonathan Couch, in his famous History

of Fishes of the British Islands recalls in Volume 1 ‘the

commercial captures of the dentex, (pictured left) by far

the largest of all bream species’. He refers to the first noted

2.5 feet in length at Falmouth Market in 1846 and the

second, at the same place five years later, which was an

amazing 4.5 feet long and weighed 38 lbs.

Donavon, another prominent naturalist in the early 1800s,

obtained an example of the dentex caught off Hastings at

the eastern end of the Channel, but no weight is given. It

is, therefore, well-documented that this very large bream

was definitely a visitor to the English Channel and may still

be. A boat angler could get lucky and make the first

capture in more than 150 years. My own experience of the

dentex has been in Gibraltar and the waters surrounding

the Atlantic Islands, the Canaries being where specimens

weighing at least 20lbs–plus are always on show, and sale,

at the fantastic fish market at Las Palmas, along with many

other varieties of exotic bream. NB. You can read more

about bream species on pages 36 and 37.

34 Saltwater Boat Angling

Mike Millman Reports On The New Gilthead Bream Record

Rob Wheaton with Salcombe waters’ latest giant

gilthead bream. It weighed a fantastic 12lbs 3ozs,

so blasting the previous record weight by 1lb 10ozs.

An immense dentex bream in the fish market at Las

Palmas. The power of this predator is obvious.

THE RECORD LINE UP

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