My son and I were fishing today and we noticed some of the bream have red spots on the sides. Can anyone tell me what is going on?

Do they look like sores or lesions?

It is hard to explain, it looks like, when you scratch yourself but don't draw blood. It just turns red.

You mean a welt? Sounds like parasites if that is the case or they're abrasions or a bacterial disease. If just a few of the fish have it I wouldn't worry about it. Most likely you can't do anything about it anyway.

Are your air and water temps really high down there? If it's bacterial or parasitic it could be initiated by the stress of high temps and other consequential problems and will go away once water temps moderate. Do you have an exc excessive algae bloom and/or lots of weeds in the pond? If so, you could have low oxygen levels at night compounded by the fact that the warmer the water is the less oxygen it can hold.

Deaner it may be red sore disease. Look at these.

http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=20;t=002805#000009

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/VM059

Todays observation is that the red spots scrape off like a parasite. We did not have this information until just a minute ago. thanks

Many thanks to all for your help. The pond boss peopler are always coureous and helpful-- thanks again.

That sounds like fish lice. Are the spots kind of lodged under the edge of scales?

This is Mrs. Deaner. I didn't mess with them to see if it was lodged under the scales or not. When I scaled them, it seems to come off.