I've put in a lot of time chasing silvers on the local stretch of the Coventry Canal after finding a shoal a few years ago. It's a real and absorbing fishing project for me as I believe the canals capable of setting a new record for the species if only people knew what they were. They are uncommon even where they are found and seem to appear only around April time and vanish completely after May is out, at least they do unless confined in a short pound. I have caught them from the Warwickshire Avon, the Severn, and a local pond too, but they have always been small fish. The canals are where the big fish are to be found.
Skimmer bream and silver bream compared
They are fascinating fish and very beautiful too, far more so than skimmer bream, who are the ugly sister by comparison, and dare I say it, they are even prettier than roach. It's easy to tell them from other fish once you have your eye in as they are as I say, just plain good looking! If it looks beautiful, bright silver (and the scales really are bright scintillating things) has a big cute eye in a small head, nice pinkish red fins, a reddish belly tinge around spawning time (but never the red flecking on the scales of the flank of a small common bream) and the scales are large compared to those of bream, then like as not, it's a silver. You are far more likely to confound roach hybrids with them than bream, unless you catch either or all in the dark and look at them by headlamp when confusion reigns because of the reflections. Roach x silver bream hybrids would be a nightmare to sort out though in any light...
The reason I say the record might one day come from a canal is this. The fish I know of are growing very fast indeed, up an average, say, three to four ounces in one year with last year's average fish coming in at just under 14 ounces up from 10 ounces or so in 2010. They are healthy and growing big and they are wild fish too, not pets confined in a pond, which is what commercial fishery specimens are, to be fair. My best fish from that shoal, or shoals, is now one-pound five-ounces, which would have been a British record itself just a few years back. Last year my friend, Keith Jobling, sent a bundle of pictures over for me to identify firmly, and sure enough what he had stumbled upon was another cache of silvers on another canal, and the best of them was 2lbs 1oz, which is a very big fish indeed caught anywhere outside of that one commercial fishery down south, Mill Farm, where they grow large on a diet of anglers bait, not natural foodstuffs.
When I tell you that right now, one the countries most successful and respected specimen anglers is fishing that same stretch of canal that Keith found and after silver bream only, you'll know that he is putting time in for a record, not just a big fish on his personal scoreboard. Believe me, I know him well, he doesn't often fish for less.
I won't be going after Keith's big fish though. I'm not an ambulance chaser. I want to encourage others to have a crack at them, because they are worth it, and because they probably are the most overlooked and underrated decent sized fish in our waters, and besides, I have work to do elsewhere with them and think I have the recipe for finding them out in miles of canal (I fish all over the canal and have only ever caught them from one tiny stretch of just three pegs length, so it's a needle in a haystack kind of job) and will be putting in the legwork, pedalling up and down on my bike, looking for the signs. I love the chase, it's a real challenge.
I would love to break the record myself, of course I would, but I'd love anyone to break the record, if I can't, but from a canal. I'd just like to see a true wild fish back on top of the pile instead of yet another from MIll Farm.
I'll ID any fish that you think might be a silver, just send me a clear shot of the fish laid in the landing net for a clear scale count and eye measurement.