Sunshine’s page: Holidays in France.

After three years Czech republic, my family and I decided to spend this years holidays in France. To be more specific: In Normandy, La Manche region. We stayed in a small town called Maupertus sur Mer, in the vicinity of Cherbourg. 

La Manche region in  Normandy, just below the pink patch.        We stayed in the vicinity of Cherbourg

Studying the map, showed me some small streams that looked promising. It turned out to be easy to get a licence in Cherbourg. In the centre of the town I went to a tackleshop at the Rue du Port. There I bought a “Carte De Peche Vacances” This license costs 30 Euro and is valid for 15 days on several parts of several streams in the vicinity. Some of the streams you can fish:

The owner of the tackleshop told me that I would have the best chances on the river Saire. The Permit gave me the right to fish about 12,5 km on both banks. On paper that is. Arriving at the river, things turned out to be a little bit different. More that 3 quarters of the stretch named in the permit was marked with signs “Peche Gardé” which meant that fishing was not allowed there, probably to protect the birds. The parts that I was allowed to fish were heavily overgrown with trees, narrow (max 5 meters) and the water was low (approx. 50 cm.) every 15 minutes of driving and searching gave me 15 minutes of castable water.  The fishing was hard, thin fluocarbon tippets and short casts brought a small trout to the net every now and then. A 12 inch trout was almost a specimen on this part of the river.

Narrow and heavilly overgrown streams

Because the local fisherman fished “au toc” (dapping with a live cricket under the rod tip) they were not bothered by the overgrowth. I only managed to find one stretch that looked really good. A bit like an English chalkstream. It produced 3 trout, the biggest just under 12 inches.

It produced 3 trout, the biggest just under 12 inches

The flies I used were:

Sadly, the other streams looked worse than the Saire. The Scenery was beautiful though. And the sight of a kingfisher flying by more than made up for the aggravation about the bodyrafters that disturbed one of the very few castable pools.

All in all: If you want to go to Normandy on a flyfishing trip, better take the part between the line Caen – Paris. And visit famous streams like the Risle. If you want to have a nice family holiday and a few afternoons of flyfishing on the square yard, La Manche is o.k..

M.M.R.,

Sunshine