StrikeAhead

Atlantic pomfret fishing: the fish that winter throws onto the beach

In December 2008, according to the Dutch Wikipedia, the sea washed up fresh dead fish all month long along the entire Dutch coast — on the Wadden Sea as well as on the North Sea coast of Holland. In December 2009 it happened all over again. They were Atlantic pomfret, *Brama brama*: a fish of the open sea that travels far north in summer and is caught out there by winter. This article is about the Atlantic pomfret, also known as Ray's bream — in German Brachsenmakrele, in Spanish palometa negra, in Italian pesce castagna, in Norwegian havbrasme.

Why it ends up on the beach

FishBase calls it subtropical and gives a temperature range of 12 to 24 °C; it travels in small schools whose movements apparently depend on temperature. The Norwegian Wikipedia is more explicit: the Atlantic pomfret cannot tolerate water below 10 °C, and the fish that have migrated north die when winter comes. Off Norway they appear in autumn, most often off Vestlandet and Trøndelag. The Dutch Wikipedia describes the route: in summer the eastern Atlantic stock moves roughly from Portugal to Scotland; on the way back south the fish can end up in the North Sea. If the water cools quickly and a storm drives them into the shallows, they strand. Great black-backed gulls and crows clear away the fresh fish quickly — which, the source suggests, is probably why many strandings go unnoticed.

The northern visitor is not entirely new, but not old either. According to the English Wikipedia, the species was first recorded in Irish waters in 1843 and was still considered scarce there until the late 1950s; then, in the 1960s and 1970s, large numbers were recorded. According to the same source, its migrations depend heavily on the temperature of intermediate waters.

Neither bream nor mackerel

Its German name, Brachsenmakrele (“bream mackerel”), carries two wrong fish within it. The Atlantic pomfret is not a mackerel and not a bream, but belongs to a family of its own, the Bramidae — the pomfrets, which the German Wikipedia calls Seebrassen. It was described in 1788 by Bonnaterre, at the time as *Sparus brama*; according to the English Wikipedia, the genus *Brama* was established by Bloch and Schneider in 1801. How long it took to pin the fish down is shown by the synonym list in the German Wikipedia: 18 names, including *Lepidotus catalonicus*, *Brama chilensis*, *Toxotes squamosus* and even *Chaetodon umbratus* — a name from the genus of the butterflyfishes. The English name “Ray's bream” matches an old synonym, *Brama raii*. ⚠️ None of the sources consulted says who the “Ray” refers to.

How to recognise it

FishBase describes a deep, laterally compressed body with a steeply curved head profile. It has no fin spines: 35 to 38 soft rays in the dorsal fin, 29 to 32 in the anal fin (FishBase). According to the Italian Wikipedia, the two fins are mirror images of each other, each with a higher lobe at the front; the pectoral fins are long and sickle-shaped (German and Portuguese Wikipedia), the tail fin deeply forked. The mouth is very large and oblique and reaches well behind the eye, the teeth are sharp and pointing backwards, the inside of the mouth is black, and in front of the eyes sits a small golden spot (Italian Wikipedia). The scales are sturdy, 70 to 90 along the lateral line (German Wikipedia); the Norwegian Wikipedia adds that the dorsal and anal fins are almost entirely scaled. According to the German Wikipedia, with its pectoral fins spread it can seemingly hang motionless in the water.

  • Size: FishBase gives 100 cm total length as the maximum, with 40 cm standard length being common; the heaviest published weight is 6 kg, the greatest age 9 years.
  • Temperature and latitude: 12 to 24 °C, from 65° North to 70° South (FishBase).

Where it lives and what it eats

  • Distribution: according to FishBase the Atlantic, Indian Ocean and South Pacific; in the western Atlantic from Nova Scotia to Argentina, in the eastern Atlantic from central Norway to South Africa. In the Mediterranean, according to the Italian Wikipedia, it occurs everywhere — it is rare only in the northern Adriatic.
  • Depth: FishBase gives 0 to 1000 metres, usually 0 to 200 metres — a fish of open water, not of the bottom.
  • Day and night: According to the Italian Wikipedia, it migrates on a daily cycle and rises into near-surface water at night.
  • Diet: FishBase calls it an opportunistic feeder: small fish, cephalopods, amphipods and krill. The Italian Wikipedia writes “vorace predatore” — a voracious predator — and names above all lanternfishes.
  • Predators: swordfish, Atlantic bluefin tuna, blue and white marlin, sailfish, dolphinfish and spiny dogfish (Italian and German Wikipedia). The German Wikipedia adds that the Atlantic pomfret is occasionally used as bait for swordfish fishing.

Spawning in warm water

According to the Italian Wikipedia, it spawns in water above 20 °C, in the Mediterranean in summer. The eggs measure 1.5 to 1.6 mm and carry a large oil droplet that keeps them afloat; the larva measures 4.8 mm at hatching. Larvae of 1 to 4 cm barely resemble the adults — taller dorsal and anal fins without a front lobe, long pelvic fins — and live at the surface. The Swedish Wikipedia also writes that it spawns in summer in warm water.

How it is caught — and what may be in the fillet

According to the German Wikipedia, the fresh Atlantic pomfret matters above all in Spain; off the west coast it is caught with hook lines whose hooks sit at 90 to 110 metres. The Italian Wikipedia names purse seines and above all longlines, and writes that it is caught rather occasionally; its flesh has a strong but not unpleasant smell and is prized in the kitchen. According to the Spanish Wikipedia, it was one of the most abundant and popular species until the 1970s — because of its flesh and above all its low price. In South Africa, according to the English Wikipedia, it is a common bycatch of the hake fishery.

⚠️ What follows is an inference from its biology, not a sourced fact: an open-water predator that rises to the surface at night and feeds mainly on small fish and squid is a fish for the night and for natural baits — and the depth at which it holds changes with the time of day. None of the sources consulted describes a method for recreational anglers.

The Spanish Wikipedia carries a warning: the flesh can be infested with the larva of a tapeworm, *Gymnorhynchus gigas*. It lies as a long white worm between the muscle fibres; its definitive hosts are large sharks. It is not harmful to humans but looks very unappetising, and in cases of heavy infestation the fish can be confiscated.

And the stock? The IUCN lists the Atlantic pomfret as “Least Concern” — not threatened. FishBase strikes a counterpoint: its vulnerability to fishing is “High” (60 out of 100), its resilience low, and a population needs 4.5 to 14 years to double. The Italian Wikipedia sees signs of moderate overfishing on the Spanish Atlantic coast and writes that knowledge of the stocks is very poor. Minimum sizes, catch limits and closed seasons are set by each country — check them locally.

Five contradictions, left open

  • How heavy? FishBase and the German, Italian, Norwegian, Dutch and Portuguese Wikipedia: 6 kg. The Swedish: 9 kg. The German adds that adult fish weigh more like 2 kg on average.
  • How big? Almost all sources give 100 cm as the maximum — the Spanish Wikipedia says 60 cm at most. Common sizes are 40 cm according to FishBase, 40 to 55 cm according to the Spanish and Norwegian Wikipedia, 40 to 70 cm according to the Portuguese.
  • How deep? FishBase: 0 to 1000 metres, usually down to 200. The Norwegian Wikipedia: down to 400 metres. The German: juveniles even below 2700 metres — deeper than any figure for the adults.
  • What colour? Italian, Norwegian and Swedish Wikipedia: silver. The Spanish: fresh from the water shiny black, shortly afterwards metallic grey. The Portuguese says “black or dark grey” in its first sentence and “silver” a few paragraphs later. The Italian half resolves it: silvery grey when alive, dark lead grey when dead.
  • Where does it spawn? The German Wikipedia: in August and September in deep water. The Italian: in water above 20 °C, with eggs and larvae at the surface. And in passing: the German Wikipedia lists mass strandings in 1949 to 1955, 1974 to 1976, 2008 and 2009 — the Dutch in 1976, 1979, 2008 and 2009.

Six names that lead to the wrong fish

  • “Brama” and “bream”. The freshwater common bream, a carp fish, is scientifically *Abramis brama* — with the same species name. The Russian GBIF list calls the Atlantic pomfret “Atlantic sea bream”, the Dutch one “braam”.
  • “Sea bream” and “Black Sea Bream”. The family the German Wikipedia calls Seebrassen (Bramidae) is not the sea breams (Sparidae), which include gilthead seabream and common dentex. And “Black Sea Bream” from the English GBIF list is not a fish of the Black Sea — in English the name usually refers to the black seabream *Spondyliosoma cantharus*.
  • “Angelfish”. In South Africa, according to the English Wikipedia, it is sold as “angelfish” — but it is not a true marine angelfish. The Portuguese Wikipedia also knows “angelina” and “freira”, the *nun*.
  • “Palometa”. In Spain it is often called simply “palometa” — but “palometa blanca” is *Trachinotus ovatus*, an entirely different species.
  • “Castagnola”. Italian “castagnola” and French “castagnole” appear in the GBIF list — but in the Mediterranean they usually mean the small damselfish *Chromis chromis*. That is why the more precise names are “pesce castagna” and “grande castagnole”.
  • “Pomfret”. In English it is the Atlantic pomfret — but on Asian markets “pomfret” usually means the Pampus species, from an entirely different family. The GBIF list also gives “pomfret” in Dutch and “pomfretti” in Finnish.

That leaves the question every article in this series starts with: when. Temperature, depth and diet are covered above, and they are fixed. What changes every day is everything else — and that is exactly where it is decided whether an evening on the water is worth it. That is what StrikeAhead calculates: it takes the conditions on your water and tells you when the trip is worth it. And because you don't look for an offshore fish from the shore, StrikeAhead Pathfinder tells you who to go out with: curated guides and skippers, personally vetted before listing — licence and insurance —, with verified catches instead of promo photos, no paid ranking and, for you as an angler, no booking fee.

Fish the right moment →