This solid bream of 48cm had a noticeably brown tinge. Black breams are not always black - just like brown trout aren't always brown.

Another unusual capture this year - a zebra bream (?), that had silvery body with black stripes. I saw such fish twice in the past, but this was the first one I managed to catch.

That was both good and bad. Warm, stable weather works in favour of the flat games but does not help the other important game of the season - Ochi Ayu pattern.

Spawned out Ayu, 15-20cm in length, drift down the river as the water cools down. They are tasty fish and works like a magnet attracting hungry breams and seabass. What we need is a flash flood often caused by typhoon rain. But alas, no typhoon hit us this year. The pageant was modest, with just a few breams fooled.

Though quite similar, there are two distinct species of black breams - this one here is called Yellow fin black bream, for the reason obvious.

They are as numerous as the black bream, but prefer murky waters and muddy bottoms, therefore limited encounter for me fishing clear water. .Of 64 breams that we caught this year, only 2 were yellow fins.

In the latter half of April we were busy chasing Seabass on Ayu pattern. In between seabass, we caught several chunky breams also joining Ayu banquet.

September.
The heat of the summer has not left us but the weather pattern has changed to that of Autumn - with big blue sky day after day.

Another progress of a kind - I managed to discover a new bream field near my hometown, Takamatsu, Kagawa.

The bream catch in 2020 totaled 64, of which 52 on fly, 12 on lure.

The season started slowly, but picked up toward the end, resulting in 2nd best scores on my log. Well, I better do better next season coming!

-End

Mid September we had a first run of pilchards. They come to the shallows, and into the rivers as if lured by the fresh water. Breams are wary creature, but they don't worry about the table manner when the soup becomes too fishy.

October, I received a guest, an old friend from my high school days, to share the nerve breaking pleasure of the bream games. The condition was not ideal, but we made it!

May is the month of their spawning run, with best chance of catching those fully grown adults.

We did catch a few, but the catch rate was far worse than the average years simply because the monsoon clouds persisted, spoiling many good tides.

One memorable outing this one - I guided one of my lure fishing mate, for a taste of the long wand.

It tends to be number game this time of the year, but somehow bigger specimen kept hanging around the shallows well into Autumn - an interesting new trend of which we happily took advantage.

End August, back in my home waters in Hiroshima;

I was fishing in a knee deep water and got suddenly hooked up where no breams were present. I knew it, as I had several times in the past seen flathead torpedo away at my footstep. This time it was a solid fish of 60cm in length, a handsome flattie to add to my fly tally.

The heat of the day was almost unbearable, with the water warmed to 34c. But the breams believe it or not, were all active, wagging their tails on sandy shallows digging up the baked crabs and the like. And they didn't mind my well served imitation crabs either.

On Bream games

On April 4 we had a warm spring day - the air temperature climbed to 18c, and the water to 12c.

The spring has come.
We knew it. Guess they knew it too.

The breams are abundant in the southern half of Japan anywhere, but particularly so in Hiroshima and the Seto inland sea.

The bream venues are conveniently near, some of them right in the populated city centre.

Now, the biggest favourite of mine - bream game by sight! I have tied enough bream flies over the long winters in Moscow - now, time to wet them finally.