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FLY FISHING IN FRANCE part 2

Our October 1998 contribution from Jon Beer

Bonjour, Francophiles. There is a lot to get through so I will bang straight into it. The rivers of France, as I explained last month, are divided into two categories. Category 1 is the faster, fresher water favoured by trout, grayling and salmon: category 2 is the slower, warmer water where coarse fish are the dominant species. These categories determine the closed seasons. Seasons can vary by a week depending on the departement but what follows are the usual dates.

CATEGORY 1 Most fly fishing will be done in these waters - that's where the trout are. In most departements you can fish from the 2nd Saturday in March until the 3rd Sunday in September (so the dates will change slightly each year). Some departments vary this period by a week. GRAYLING fishing begins on 3rd Saturday in May and ends with all other fishing in September. Some places ban wading until the grayling fishing begins to protect their eggs. Some places do not allow fishing in category 1 on certain days of the week (e.g. Tuesdays and Fridays) for some or all of the season. Check this when you get your ticket.

CATEGORY 2 You can fish on category 2 waters all year round but there are closed seasons for certain species. For BROWN TROUT the season is the same as in category 1 waters. For GRAYLING the season runs from 3rd Saturday in May to the end of the year. SEA TROUT and SALMON seasons vary hugely and are fixed each year. You will need another stamp on your annual licence for either of these: it is not available on a Carte Vacances. I should forget them for holiday fishing. Frankly, there just aren't enough to make it worth while.

"Fly-only water" is quite rare in France although it is increasing apace. You will usually find that all methods are allowed and some folk will be spinning or worming or baiting. They are usually doing this because it is more effective at the time. In the great fly fishing rivers of the Doubs you will see a bloke bait fishing the shady margins and bankside roots in the heat of the day and then fly-fishing the river for a hatch of huge stoneflies in the evening. Fly only sections can be labelled "Mouche Fouettée" - meaning "cast" (as opposed to using a bubble float). Even rarer are sections for catch-and-release or "No Kill" but they too are increasing. There will also be sections of the club water (réserves de pêche) which are temporarily closed for a year to give the fish a breather or for longer to act as nurseries for young trout. Finding all this out is simple. Each departement has a federation of APMAs ( angling clubs) which produces a leaflet - sometimes a whole glossy book - with all the details. You will have to read this. When I did "O" level French our reading book, the source of our colloquial vocab, was "Hank, Le Trappeur", about a fur hunter in the Canadian forests. I could have walked into any French-speaking trading post and ordered gin traps and pemmican with confidence. I could not, alas, buy a train ticket or a pair of underpants or anything useful. So here are some words and phrases you didn't get in school. Une truite (trout - obviously): brown trout are fario, rainbows are arc-en-ciel. Une ombre (grayling) is easily confused with un omble (char). It is even more easily confused with une ombre (a shadow): in a recent French tourist board brochure, "fishing for grayling" was translated as "fishing in the shade". For la pêche à la mouche (sèche)(noyée) (dry- or wet-fly fishing) you will need une canne (fishing rod), un moulinet (reel), une soie (flyline) with un bas de ligne (leader) and un hameçon (hook) on the end. If fly fishing doesn't work you can use un appât (a bait). You can marcher dans la rivière (wade) in le pantalon de pêche (chest waders) or les cuissardes (thigh waders) and go en aval and en amont (downstream and upstream). Watch out when the river is en crue (in spate), when le débit (the flow) is strong and le niveau de l'eau (water level) is high. During l'éclosion (the hatch of flies) you may see a trout gobe une mouche - take a fly (natural or artificial) from the surface and you can almost see his great mouth doing it in this splendid word. The noun is un gobage (a rise) which is my favourite French word. Buy une carte journalière (day ticket) and you will avoid being banged up as un braconnier (a poacher). If you're going to talk fishing with fellow anglers there are two things to remember: much of their fly-fishing - and hence flyfishing words - came from the English. There is a good chance that technical terms are the same. Rod-lengths are still given in pieds. Fly-tying, hackles, herl, olive, waders, pool are all used - a Greenwells is comfortingly "un Greenwells" - so have a stab in English if you need a technical term. Secondly, natural flies are often called by their latin names: caddis are "trichoptères", stoneflies are "plécoptères", a large dark olive is "une rhodani" and so on. Have fun. A final hint for anyone fishing in any country with a strange and impenetrable language - this works just as well in Wales. A most useful phrase is the question "is it possible to.." ("est-ce que c'est possible de..."). It has three huge advantages. First, it is followed by the infinitive (the bit listed in the dictionary ) "....to buy a ticket here?", "....to fish downstream of the bridge?" and so on. Secondly, it requires the answer "yes" or "no". Even I can understand that - as long as they nod or shake the head. And thirdly, it is immensely polite - if creakingly archaic. This is fine: it is exactly what the French expect of an English fly-fisherman.

If you have your own information to add please drop us a line.

Jon Beer contributes regularly to publications including Trout & Salmon and The Telegraph. If you have any comments, do not hesitate to get in touch or use the message board.