The search for Australia’s Greatest Fish: Bream

The new task has them travelling Australia on the hunt for the species of fish that provides the best rewards in bulk.

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Yep, we’re not just talking just how they taste from the pan. We’ll also be measuring the fish against a number of criteria including how easy they are to find, how much fight they have when you reel them in, and even how they look come time to snap the brag photo that will end up on social media.

Each fish will be scored across the four criteria, with a maximum of five points in each category. The fish will then be given a final score out of 20, and a place on the Australia’s Greatest Fish scoreboard.

Why is it some fishers spend their entire life savings on fast bream boats and bream lures, while others think bream are stinking swamp donkeys not worth targeting?

Love them or hate them, bream is one of the most popular bread and butter species in Australia and deserves to be rated.

Bream are pretty much found right around the entire country, although it’s in the southern half of Australia where they are most often targeted.

It seems those in the tropics would rather catch a barra than a bream – go figure!

Bream fishing can be as hard or as easy as you want it to be.

It is a fish that kids can catch easily off a jetty on a bit of prawn sourced from thew local servo’s bait freezer. Yet grown adults will spend tens of thousands of dollars on fast boats and snappy rods sporting expensive little lures and struggle to catch them.

Some people will get hooked on bream fishing. There’s even a semi-professional fishing tour that travels the country, setting up American-style tournaments that stateside would target bass, but here they target bream.

Some laugh at all these over-the-top, loud shirt-wearing competitors, but we’re not so sure.

Maybe bream really is Australia’s favourite fish. Here’s how we rate it.

We’re rating each species of fish on how accessible it is and how difficult it is to catch. The easier and more accessible, the higher the score.

Overall, bream is relatively easy to target. They are widespread through Australia and you don’t need a boat or an expensive outfit to catch them.

Here are a few tips to help you get more bites:

• If bait fishing, use fresh bait; go to the effort of collecting the bait yourself. Crabs, nippers, worms and mussels are all good bream bait and will out-fish the packet bait you buy from the servo.
• Light fluorocarbon leaders no heavier than 3.0kg (6.0lbs) will trick the big bream
• Bream won’t hit a moving lure, so give a hardbody lure a twitch, then let it pause. If you’re using a soft plastic, give it plenty of time to sink and watch your line closely. You will find 90 per cent of the bites will be on the pause or the drop.

Score: 7/10

Scrapability is a measure of how much of a fight the fish puts up once it’s on the hook.

Bream are a great sportfish because to get the big ones to bite, you need to use light line and light fishing rods and reels. That means they fight well.

If you are not in a snaggy area, remember to use a very light drag as the hooks on most bream lures are tiny, and you will pull them out of the fish’s mouth if you tighten up too much.

If you’re fishing around pylons or oyster leases, use a slightly heavier gauge hook on lures, set the drag a bit more and hang on!

Score: 6/10

Yep, fish rate highly in the vanity stakes. Looking good through the camera lens is an important measure on the Australia’s Greatest Fish assessment list.

We’re off to a bad start, because bream don’t look very pretty.

They vary in colour from muddy brown or bronze to a glistening silver depending on where in the estuary you catch them.

Ocean bream found along the beaches or at the mouth of the estuary system are the ones that look the best.

A bream of a lifetime is only 50cm long, so in terms of photography, it’s not the greatest fish to show the world, even if you are holding it out a long way from your body to make it look as large as possible.

Score: 3.5/10

Even though in some circles you would be run out of town even if you thought about killing and eating a bream, they are fact good to eat.

But remember, a big bream is an old bream, and some of the 40cm-plus fish could be north of 20 years of age.

ZIf you are going to keep a few, limit yourself to what the rules allow in your state or territory. Whatever you do, don’t kill them in front of the fancy bream fishos in their fancy boats.

Our preferred way to eat a bream is cooking it as a whole fish with an Asian-inspired sauce dripped over the top. You’d be surprised by how good they taste.

Score: 6.5/10

So, how does bream rate? On the plus side, it is dead easy to find, puts up a decent fight, cooks up a treat. However, if there was a Tinder for fish you’d probably be swiping left, not right.

The overall score for bream in Hook, Line and Sinker’s challenge to find Australia’s Greatest Fish is 22 out of 40.

Next time on Australia’s Greatest Fish: Murray cod

The latest season of Hook, Line and Sinker airs on 7Mate from July 12. Check your local TV guide for times