Bruno Garcia from the Charente-Maritime fishing federation takes us today on France Bleu la Rochelle to pick blackberries… and not to make jams!
Bruno Garcia : We will start by picking blackberries. We first spot beautiful brambles with these pretty purplish red berries, black is even better. Even if in our countryside the hedgerows have given way to intensive crops, we still have a few spared sectors where we will find our happiness.
Good but tell me Bruno it’s not the jam chronicle we are going to talk about fishing?
We’re going to talk about peach and blackberry peach. Fish are opportunistic and content with what nature gives them. September is the perfect month to fish with this fruit. Nursery shrubs release it regularly when they reach maturity and some omnivorous species feast on it. As May-June is cherry season.
Are you telling me that each season has its favorite fruit for fishing?
That’s exactly what I’m telling you. If you wait a few days you can try the grape. In July August watermelon but there plan a little bigger hooks.
What species?
Most of the cyprinids, roach, rudd, dace, chub and it is on the latter that we will focus today. Why the chub? Quite simply because it is present in Charente-Maritime but also because it reaches interesting sizes, much larger than a roach, a rudd or a dace. It is not uncommon in 17 for a chub to weigh 2 kg. For a fish of this size the first starts, I should say rush as all the young fishermen say but I refuse these expressions from across the Channel, the French vocabulary is rich enough to express very clearly, unequivocally, what we want to express. So with a chub the first starts are dazzling and I guarantee you the sensations.
We discuss the technique
The chub is subservient to the intermediate part of the watercourses, therefore waters, without them always being translucent, tending to be rather clear. It will therefore be necessary to exercise discretion, it is also a fairly suspicious fish. You see it’s good, he sees you it’s grated, he won’t bite.
We dress up as Sioux
That’s it ! Then for the assembly it is very simple. You will have selected very ripe or even chard fruits so that the hook passes well through when hooking up and especially not the biggest ones. Either you thread your blackberry directly on the hook or you use it according to the hair method. The blackberry will be found below in derivation of your hook, which leads to less misses. The hook will be chosen according to the size of the blackberry. In general a number 8 or 10 is very suitable. For my part, I do not use floats or lead, the weight of the bait is enough to immerse the assembly. To illustrate this practice well, imagine fishing for trout. The 16 or 18 hundredth nylon is taut and allows you to feel the slightest attack.
Good now the good corners, it is necessary to share!
We’re used to it, we have to share! you know when you are fishing at sea and the dolphins are there around the boat, we have no choice, we leave them the biggest piece of cake. For the good places without hesitation in priority the Seugne and the Boutonne. Medium-sized rivers, on a human scale, I would say, where the identification of chub remains quite easy.