Category Archives: Fish

the fish you find in Alsace

the fish in Alsace

You can catch a lot of kind of fish species with a fly rod. Here you will find the principal species of the mentioned areas and in all Alsace. .

in the storck reservoir

rainbow trout : onchorynchus mykiss

In the storkreservoir, the rainbow trouts are the most representative. With their yellow variety, the aguabonitas, the rainbows indeed account for 90% of the salmonidae. The brown trouts , the brook trouts and chars for the remaining 10%. The biggest trouts become bigger than 90 cm.

But many other species of fish can be taken by the fly there: the pikes, numerous and sometimes very large (record with the fly 1,20 m), the perchs and even the pikeperchs (record 83 cm), the carps (record : 80 cm), the tanches (I took one of 47 cm with a wooly-worm), and even some big breams.

in the Rhine

a grayling: thymallus thymallus

In the Rhine the graylings was a numerous species until 2003, and some specimens came up 50 cm. Splendid combatant, often changing his mood, superb in its silver livery and its coloured dorsal, he is the symbol of the river. But, because of the very hot days from 2003, a lot of them died. So, we have seen their population decline, also because of the predation of cormorants, more and more numerous . A respectfull fisherman would limit himself on one grayling maximum in the year, of more than 40 cm (official minimal size) to help the population coming back. Since 2015 it si forbidden to fish them.

Some nice trouts are sometimes also surprised with the fly. Thus, I had the chance october the first 1998, to catch (and release) one magnificient of 53 cm, taken with a clear nymph.

Especially in the calms, one can touch white fish: chubs, daces, bleaks from who the carnivores are never distant: perchs, pikes and aspes. These are sometimes bigger than 80 cm and are nice sportfish, with streamers. For the next years there is also a hope for flyfisherman to catch an atlantic salmon. These beginn actually to come back for some years (for yet, it is’nt possible to fish them).

in the Bruche

a brown trout : salmo truta fario

In the highest part of the Bruche , brown trouts are the favourite of the flyfishers. Thi kind of trout is the indigenous fish par excellence in the Bruche, because it reproduces there fo centuries. The fishing departmental federation has made many efforts to keep this alsatian kind of brown trout ! The average size of these trouts is not very significant (legal size to 25 cm, rare fish bigger than 35 cm – my personal record is 45 cm) but their fightness and their promptness will delight you. Rainbow trouts have been introduced there for several years, and some reach respectable sizes.

The grayling is also acclimatized in a large part of the Bruche (from Urmatt to Eckbolsheim), and, since the year 1996 one usually touches some with the fly. If their average size is lower than those of the Rhine, the fish from 30 to 35 cm are rare. But you will really catch more fish lower than the legal size of 32 cm. It is very important to release gently all the graylings because in the last years their population comes dramatically down.

The whitefish are numerous down Heiligenberg, even if some daces are already founded in Wisches. Chubs and spirlin breaks come also on the dry flies. With the streamer you will maybe have the chance to take some perchs and pikes.

Possible catch with the fly are so many in Alsace, and will be in the future can be even more exciting with the return of the salmon. (The youg salmons are part of the banality of catch in the Bruche, where the reintroduction is the most concentrated). There are still many other interesting places for fly fishing in Alsace where you will touch these species: first category rivers, some 2nd category trails, gravel reservoirs (many in the plain of Alsace), or the lakes of Vosges in the Haut-Rhin.

The chub in Alsace

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the chub: : leuciscus cephalus

Among the fish that we regularly catch with the fly in Alsace, whatever the technique, the chub is one of my favorites. If it is less “noble” than a trout, it is largely as suspicious and difficult to catch with regard to large specimens. When I started, at the age of 6, to fish by surprise in the stream of my childhood, my first big feelings as a fisherman I owe them to the chub, the biggest of which had “snubbed” my grasshopper left me dreaming for several nights.

Here you will find some answers to questions you might ask yourself about his manners, his fishing and the good flies you need to deceive his legendary distrust.

The chub (leuciscus cephalus) like the dace, belongs to the genus Leuciscus which includes about twenty species and subspecies in Europe. With its fusiform and cylindrical body covered with large scales and its massive head, the chub is a “beefy” fish. Its back is blue-green to gray-brown with greenish reflections. Silvery in young fish, its flanks become nicely golden as soon as they exceed 30 cm. Its ventral and anal fins are orange and its tail is the color of the Vosges crest line, it means gray-blue.

It is a very common species throughout Europe. In Alsace, it is found in the Rhine, the canals, the Plobsheim lake, numerous gravel pits and all second category rivers as well as the lower areas of first category rivers. With global warming, we meet it more and more regularly upstream of rivers, even in 1st category areas where barely 10 years ago there were only trout. This is how I caught a chub in 2019 on the no-kill course in Schirmeck .

An American fly fisherman fighting with a chub in the Bruche
An American fly fisherman fighting with a chub in the Bruche

Chevesne or chevaine in french, it has many diminutives or nicknames, like cabot (big head). In Germany he is known as Döbel and in Alsace as Fourne. And in the area of the river Sarre as Milp. In some fish bases, you may find it also sometimes until Squalius cephalus .

The chub lives mainly in fairly slow running waters, but I regularly catch them in clearly stronger currents. In summer it is often closer to the surface and under the branches overhanging the banks in search of insects, while in winter it descends to the bottom. But the slightest warming is enough to bring it out of its winter torpor.

A nice chub which took a nymph TVC in the Bruche
A nice chub which took a nymph TVC in the Bruche

Generally living in schools of 5 to 30 individuals when they are small, the largest chub are more solitary, even if an area which is very favorable to them can see several large fish dawdling together. It is generally considered that it can reach 70 cm and 5 kilos, My personal record is a 68 cm chub, caught in the Bruche in Molsheim, on sight, with an imitation of a freshwater scud.

A beautiful head and a wary eye, that's the chub
E A beautiful head and a wary eye, that’s the chub

This fish is omnivorous. It is known to eat almost everything: worms, larvae, crustaceans, molluscs, insects, river mosses, fruits, bread and small fish.
Its appetite makes us happy as a fly fisherman, because it is possible to fish it all year round. I personally like to try a big chub on sight in summer under the foliage, in the cool. In this case my favorite flies are TOT, KMM-2, CBF and sometimes CSC-2.. But I also like to deceive my first chubs of the year from January or February, in the 2nd category, as long as the water is clear and a little ray of sunshine causes the hatch of a few midges, which will not fail to interest the schools of small chub. In this case it will be on a TOT, a CTC-1 or a PTC-3. And it is not uncommon for a larger specimen to point its large lips towards the surface on this occasion. As nymph, my preference for fishing big chub on sight, or with indicator, goes to the NFL-2, TVC-1, GMS-1, GCS and the series of micro-headset-silver, particularly the MCA-4.

Its reputation as a very mistrustful fish is legendary and I can confirm that it is not usurped. How many times have I seen a big chub inspecting my dry fly on the surface for a long time, before leaving again disdainfully, seeming to mock the humble fisherman whose heart was racing at the sight of the imminent swallowing. And, whatever the technique, once a big chub has spotted you, it becomes almost impossible to make it bite. The slowest gestures are necessary to approach it.

A little chub, caught in a arm of the Rhine with a little nymph NFL
A little chub, caught in a arm of the Rhine with a little nymph NFL

The chub is not known for its strong defense and it is true that it generally surrenders fairly quickly. But more than one big chub made me see all the colors at the end of a leader before coming. It happened to me several times before I identified the fish, to believe for more than a minute that I had a big trout at the end of my line. This is the kind of emotion that I wish you!

Fishing in an arm of Rhine near Gerstheim

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the arm of the Rhine: Schollengiessen

Thursday 15 February 2020: On a beautiful sunny but windy day, I went with my friend Jean-Marie to visit an arm of the Rhine located near Gerstheim, known to the Alsatian fishermen: the Schollengiessen. The place is very frequented by fishermen at the time all winter because the white fish go up in this arm less cold than the river, in the prospect of spring spawning. Indeed, if the edges are often sandy-muddy, areas of gravel persist in the main bed of this arm of the Rhine, allowing many white fish to spawn there. I have fished there also last year in febryuary on chub .

It is in this hope that we came with our light fly rod and our dryflies and nymph boxes, leaving out the usual equipment of the reservoir. Unfortunately, the effects of the strong wind and the decrease in the barometer observed before leaving after lunch were combined to wedge insects and fish.

This did not prevent us from presenting our small dry flies and nymphs to schools of white fish including bleak, roach, chub and small asps. Alternating dry and nymph fishing on sight, we managed to deceive some of these fish: chub, bleak, asp and roach, including a single pretty fish, a chub about thirty centimeters. This one had made my heart beat by first being nonchalantly interested by my little CTC-1, before inspecting it, then pretending to be disinterested, before turning around for taking it delicately. Just for that emotion, I didn’t regret having made the trip. If I caught a roach with a nymph on sight, on a small MCA-4, that Jean-Marie touched 2 fish on an NFL-2, it was with dry that we took the most pleasure, thanks to the vision of ( rare) fish coming to the surface on our flies: if a FMF-2 on hook 20 gave me the greatest number of catches, we also had some fish on CTC-1, RTR, KMM-1, even on a CBF, for Jean -Marie, despite the absence of insects larger than 5 mm.

We really enjoyed these 2 hours of fishing, in a beautiful, almost spring sun, despite temperatures cooled by the disturbing wind.

this chub took the CTC-1 on the surface
Jean Marie fishing with a nymph
a bleak wihch took a FMF-2

The trout in Alsace

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The brown trout

The brown trout (Salmo Truta Fario) is the native fish par excellence in the Vosges Massif and Piedmont, where most of the rivers in Alsace flow.

Still well present in the upstream part of the alsatian rivers, the future of the trout is nevertheless quite uncertain, in Alsace as in all the European regions of average altitude. Populations are in fact threatened with extinction because of a multitude of dangers: accidental or (and) chronic pollution, predation of cormorants and other more or less natural predators, climate warming leading to a decrease in Oxygen dissolved in water, an essential parameter in the survival of the species, decreased caches (river and stream recalibration), food competition related to the decline in natural food, particularly Insects (insecticides, pesticides)

Already since the years 2000 it is obvious that only upstream streams, to simplify portions above 400 meters above sea level, still contain a more or less natural population of brown trouts in alsatian streams. Even on the Schirmeck no-kill course, located at 350 m above sea level, the chub come to mingle with the population of trout, however consistent. On the occasion of an electric fishery carried out in 2003 on the no-kill course of Muhlbach on Bruche, the fishing federation had already shown that the biomass was more important in white fish (chub, daces and barbers) than in brown trout.

Breeding of the species continues, between December and February, upstream of most of the basin head streams. Although sometimes anarchic rearing has disconsolate the wild strain, efforts have been made for several years by the departmental federation and the Basin Management Committee to safeguard the natural strains. Thus the Federation of Bas-Rhin has set up since the years 2005 a plan of reintroduction of brown trout from the so-called Baerembach strain, the name of a creek of the northern Vosges whose genomes appeared to be the least polluted by the trout rearing from Numerous European farms with various but rarely alsatian strains.

If, at the end of the twentieth century, the fishintroducing was practised, it must be recognized, in an anarchic manner, the establishment of the basin committees and the professionalisation of the fishing federations currently allows to honour most often in Alsace a patrimonial management, whose effects, in natural quality of trout, is already felt in many alsatian rivers, such as the Doller, the Thur, the Bruche, the Mossig, the Fecht, or even the lauter.

In Alsace you will sometimes find very large trout in the old Rhine or the Rhine floodway canal, which regularly hosts large trouts, including reformed spawners of the federal fish farm in Obenheim. Elsewhere, the size average of the brown trout is not very important, the alsatian rivers being sandstone or granitic rather than limestone, but their fighting and vivacity will delight you.

Brown trout is an omnivorous and highly opportunistic fish for its food. It is on the other hand a suspicious nature and does not allow itself to be easily approached. Sunny days are generally less good for fishing than covered and rainy days, as the brownie is is lucifuge.

If there are many fishing techniques for trout, it is flyfishing that is certainly the most exciting. It is also the most regularly sought-after species of fly fishermen. It allows the practice of all our techniques, because it occasionally comes to rise on the surface to take a dry fly, will be tempted by a nymph drifting over the current, fetch angrily a streamer nervously stripped or even pick a wet fly passing to her Range, in the frenzy of a spring hatch.

In view of the threats evoked previously that affect the populations of brown trout, I invite each responsible flyfisherman to take the minimum of these fish and to increase in personal capacity the minimum size of catch, often officially to 23 or 25cm, still far too low to allow the most beautiful spawners to perpetuate the species.

Murg male Fario trout in Black Forest (Germany)

Rainbow trout

Rainbow trout (Onchorynchus Mykiss) is not a native fish in Alsace. However, its location has been very real for about fifty years.

A rainbow trout caught in the river

It is obviously very present in pond, lake or reservoir, like the stork reservoir in Seltz, where the larger specimens allow fly fishermen to capture a trophy fish.

Rainbow trout are also found in most of the upper lakes of the alsatian Vosges, such as the trout lake (or Forlet) where they often coexist with the brown trout.


But it is also present in our rivers. Rainbow trout, known as “portion trout”, have long been dispatched for the opening of trout fishing in 1 ° category, and it is still so in some fishing associations. Some survivors of the high fishing pressure of the first days of the opening are occasionally able to adapt to their new environment for long months or even years, and then offer us a pleasant sport fishing.

Breeding fingerlings of higher quality strains have also occasionally been set in several alsatian rivers and very beautiful fish have thus managed to acclimatize on certain specific posts of these rivers. I still remember the capture in 2012, of a very beautiful rainbow trout, visibly becoming wild, who had taken my little nymph on the no-kill course of Muhlbach on Bruche.

Less demanding on the level of dissolved oxygen in water than its European cousin, rainbow trout of American origin is also an omnivorous and opportunistic fish. Because it is more regularly active to feed than borwn trout, which spends many hours in its cache, rainbow trout is particularly interesting for the fly fisherman.

Just as with the brown trout, and contrary to what many fishermen advocate, I think it’s good to release the rainbow trout under 30 cm that you could catch in the river. Because if the big rainbow can be predatory small brown trout, this is not the case of the smallest and these fish offer a nice sport fishing.

Rainbow trout with very white dress

The Salmon in Alsace

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a atlantic salmon, caught on the fly
atlantic salmon, caught with a fly

The reintroduction of salmon into the Rhine and its tributaries has continued since the launch of the 2000 salmon plan. A new management plan for migratory fish in the Rhine-Meuse basin was launched in 2016. Since the end of the years 2000, between 60 and more than 200 salmon have been recorded each year at the Iffezheim Fish pass on the Rhine. See details of the fish counted on the Saumon Rhin association website.

biological cycle of the salmon. picture from the assocition saumon-Rhin

On the Bruche, the salmon go up too.

In November 2004, prior to the construction of the fish pass, nine salmon were counted at the foot of the Avolsheim dam on the Bruche, before being returned to the top of the fall. Unfortunately they were only males. The Avolsheim Dam on the Bruche, formerly considered impassable for salmon, was equipped with a bypass river type pass in 2010. Since then, spawning grounds for salmon and sea trout have been discovered annually upstream of the threshold.

a big salmon of the Rhine
big salmon of the Rhine

This superb salmon measures 96.5 cm for 8,200 kg and was captured in the Iffezheim trap on Sunday, December 17, 2000. He was of course released upstream, after full scientific review!

On December 11, 2005, Jacky VOELKER, manager of the fishing tackle store “Fario” in Dorlisheim, caught (and handed) by fishing the pike with the dead fish, a salmon from 64 cm by Ernolsheim on Bruche. I personally found myself with a 80 cm salmon passing 20 cm from my wading shoes by fishing the graylings on the Bruche at Molsheim in the fall of 2015. The previous year, between Molsheim and Avolsheim, still fishing the grayling at the end of the season, I picked up, fishing with a nymph, a very large fish, total silvery, very fine and lively. I would not swear it was not a salmon.

These experiments suggest that it is also possible for a fly fisherman to catch a salmon in Alsace, even if it stays difficult.

flyfishing on salmon iis also possible in Alsace
Catching an Atlantic salmon with a fly is also possible in Alsace