Angler, who knows, what his favorite fish eat, there are no major problems with catching them afterwards. In our series of articles on fish nutrition, we present one of the most important freshwater fish – bream.
Every angler dreams of it, to get to know your favorite fish food in detail, which he fishes with a fishing rod. French scientists examined the stomach contents of approx 750 bream.
U 68 fish (on 100 subjects) bloodworm larvae were found in the stomachs. As for animal plankton, it turns out, that the greatest delicacy of bream is Daphnia (the presence of these tiny crustaceans was found as far as in 73 percent of the stomachs of the tested fish). Rowers and spouses, one of the most important organisms that are part of the animal plankton, found respectively u 42 i 14 percentage of bream tested for food content.
Especially interesting for anglers – worms, thus animals not found naturally in water, found in the stomach of every fifth bream (22 percent).
Lots of worms
This is the best proof, that bream are especially looking for grubs, that accidentally ended up in the water (heavy rainfall, washed during high water level in the river and thrown into the water by anglers).
Lots of these fish (with worms in the stomach) it was really impressive in size!
Another important tip for anglers – eight percent of bream had mollusks in their stomachs, mainly clams and snails. The relatively largest bream showed a tendency to eat molluscs. Eighty percent of the examined bream over 30 cm had the remains of clams and snails in their stomachs.
The food preferences of bream also change with age.
During the first two years of life, young bream eat mainly animal plankton filtered from open water..
Variety with age
With time, the main food of bream becomes bloodworm larvae that are dug out of the mud.
The menu of the oldest bream is already very varied.
Large fish like to eat not only worms and mollusks, but also the larvae of dragonflies and donkeys.
Adult bream also eat plankton.
However, plankton accounts for at most ten percent of the fish's 24-hour dietary weight.
For all bream over two years of age, the most important food component is bloodworm larvae. Bream together with carp and tench are the biggest consumers of these red larvae.
Our table shows the percentage, in how many stomachs of bream at least the remains of the given food have been found. Example: w 68 on 100 the examined stomach contents revealed the presence of at least the remains of bloodworm larvae. Whatever, how many larvae were there and what was the volume of their remnants in the food content. Scientists have found animal plankton in the stomachs of bream of all age groups. The plankton food was clearly dominated by water fleas (they were found in 73 percentage of all fish tested).