Information below from:- www.anglerstimes.co.uk/fishbream.htm

COMMON OR BRONZE BREAM
Abramis Brama
Family Cyprinidae

Distribution: Found throughout most of lowland Britain, parts of Wales and Ireland.

Habitat: A very common shoal fish found in most lakes, ponds, gravel pits, canals and slow rivers.

Description: Easily distinguished from other species, the bream has a very deep narrow body with the tail fin being deeply forked, the upper lobe being pointed and the lower one slightly rounded. The anal fin is very long reaching from just past the mid-point of the belly to almost the tail. In spite of being well scaled, the bream is extremely slimy.

The back is green/brown, slate coloured or even black in old age. The sides are paler being grey/olive-coloured with a touch of bronze in maturity, becoming darker and brassier with increased aged. The underside is buff, white or cream.

Due to their shape, anglers give them the nickname of dustbin lids or slabs.
Young bream, called ‘skimmers’, are bright white/silver, extremely slimy and are often confused with silver or white bream, a different species altogether.

Common bream have much smaller eyes than silver bream, 25-27 rays on their anal fin, while silver bream have 19-21.

British record: 18lb 15oz caught by Tom Huntley, from Bawburgh Lake, 2001

Bream are opportunist shoal fish - they will feed from the bottom - up to mid-water and will take a variety of baits, but respond particularly well to groundbaiting.

Large shoals of feeding bream stir up the bottom when rooting for food, this results in gases being released which carry silt clouds to the surface - so watch out for bubbles and discoloured water when trying to locate your fish.

Moving in shoals, bream quickly clear the area of anything edible and then move on, so if you’re catching bream, don’t be afraid to give them plenty of freebies to keep them interested and in your swim.

Not the best of fighters, bream make the most of their deep shape and tend ‘kite’ and thump their heads when hooked

SILVER BREAM or WHITE BREAM
Abramis Bjoerkna Family: Cyprinidae

Not as prolific or widespread as the common bream, when caught they are generally thought to be immature common bream.

Fish weighing well over a pound are regularly caught, but because many anglers assume they have caught a hybrid or a skimmer they don’t bother to claim a record.

Difficult to tell apart when young, the two species have the same silver colouring, but the common bream turns golden olive with age, while the silver bream does not change colour at all.

Identification.

Silver Bream are moderately deep bodied with a high back and flattened from side to side. The head is small, scaleless, and the eye is moderately large. Dorsal fin short based and high, anal fin long based with 21-23 branched rays. Body scales moderately large, 44-48 in the lateral line.

Silver Bream coloration, light olive brown on the back, sides brilliant silver. Fins are dusky except for the pectoral and pelvic fins which are orange with grey tips.
The silver bream has bigger scales but less in number, a larger eye than the common and its pectoral and pelvic fins are slightly reddish - not dark like those of the common bream.

The two species, along with roach and rudd, interbreed freely, this results in hybrids.
The hybrid can be a real ‘Heinz’ variety, with shape, colour, number of scales etc., a mix between those of its parents. It takes an expert to distinguish between a hybrid and a true silver bream.

Habitat.
Silver Bream are most abundant in large, slow flowing rivers and their flood plains, often found in reservoirs and flooded gravel pits.

British Record: Dennis Flack holds the British record for a 425g (15oz ) fish caught in 1988 from Grime Spring, a pond on his own farm near Lakenheath, Suffolk.

Food.
Feeds in mid water on planktonic crustaceans, and on insect larvae, on vegetation, and also on the bottom on a variety of invertebrates.

Breeding.
Spawns amongst plants in summer in small schools. The yellowish eggs stick to the plant leaves.

Technical Stuff	Common Bream	Silver Bream
Anal Fin branched rays	23-29	19-23
Dorsal Fin branched rays	8-10	7-9
Lateral Line	49-57	44-50
Scales above lateral line (rows)	11-15	8-11
Scales below lateral line (rows)	6-8	4-6
Pharnygeal teeth	A single row of 5	2 rows on each side teeth on each side with 5 in one and on other

Silver Bream [Bream Flat]

Blicca bjoerkna (Linnaeus, 1758)

IDENTIFICATION Deep bodied, with a long anal fin, a high dorsal, and a relatively small head. No barbels. The body is moderately hump-backed. The mouth is inferior, the lips thick. The eye is large, its diameter greater than the snout length. The anal origin is behind the last ray of the dorsal; the margin of the anal is shallowly concave. The scales on the side are large (almost equal to the eye diameter), thick and rather dull surfaced. It grows to an average length of 8-10 in (20-5 cm), and a weight of 1 lb (453 g). The record British rod-caught fish weighed 4½ lb (2.04 kg).
The head and back are olive brown or greyish, the sides pale with a silvery sheen, and ventrally it is white. The dorsal, tail and anal fins are grey tinted, the pelvic fin tip dark, reddish near its base.

BIOLOGY It prefers slow-running waters and lakes and is normally found only in the lowland plains. It is frequently taken in the same waters as the bronze bream (with which it is often confused).
The silver bream spawns from June to July, often, though not always, intermittently at intervals of ten or eleven days, and two or three separate spawnings are made. Spawning takes place at temperatures of 16-17°C (60-2°F) amongst dense weed growth in depths of 2-3 ft (61-91 cm). The eggs are lemon yellow, about 2 mm in diameter, and are attached to the weeds; they hatch in four to six days. The larvae at hatching measure about 4.8 mm. Growth in British waters is fast for the first two years and then falls off; the average in a Norfolk sample was: first year, 3½ in (9 cm); second year, 4½ in (11.5 cm); third year, 4¾ in (12.4 cm); fourth year, 5¼ in (13 cm); fifth year, 6¼ in (16 cm). In European waters the growth rate is slower at first, catching up with the British figures in the fourth or fifth year, and the fish live longer, attaining a length of 9¼ in (23.5 cm) in their ninth year. Males mature in their third year, females a year later.
The food is remarkably similar to that of the bream. Young fish eat small crustaceans, many of them planktonic and including copepods, cladocera (Chydorus) and ostracods. They also eat higher plants and green algae. Around maturity they assume a diet composed mainly of bottom-living organisms, for example chironomid larvae (bloodwords), caddis larvae, mayfly nymphs and insects generally. They also eat crustaceans (Gammarus), small molluscs and plants. The structure of the mouth prevents it being drawn out into a downwardly opening tube as in the bream (which sucks up mud with its food) and silver bream seem to be much more selective feeders. They fast in winter, as do the bream.
Silver bream have little value to anglers, their small size being a disadvantage. They are not fished for or eaten for the same reason. Their competition for food with the bream in its immature years may make their presence undesirable if large bream are being deliberately cultivated. The general similarity in life history between these species presents a number of interesting problems which still need to be studied.