C. Behr, fishing the floodway canal. Picture from the magazine ” Plaisirs de la pêche” in 1994
Fly fishing on the Rhine floodway canal allows since some years to fish on very big trouts near Strasbourg in Alsace.
In 1993, while I was at the Federation of fishing associations of the Bas-Rhin, I worked on setting up a fly only part on the Rhine floodway canal (contre-canal de drainage du Rhin in french), with one section at Plobsheim and another at Schoenau. (see picture above where I fish the canal in Plobsheim, published in the magazine “Pleasures of Fishing” of January / February 1994)
The management had been entrusted to the flyfishing club of Robertsau (Strasbourg). The Federation of Bas-Rhin took over the management on its own in 2012 and made it a public course, open to all fishermen holding a fishing card from department of Bas-Rhin (67). Two sections of this channel are managed in no kill sections. On the occasion of the opening of the 1st category, the Federation makes an immersion of rainbow trouts and / or brown trouts, most of them very big, in addition to the fishes naturally present.
The native population, if it includes some trout and graylings, is mostly composed by chubs and barbels. The (big) pikes are also whipped in the quieter parts.
Fishing is particularly interesting from the opening of the 1st category, in march, until May. It is more difficult after that, the fish having been very fished, but also because of the very dense meadows, leaving only few flows for the flies.
A fishcatch book is available by the federation on request or from the federal guards. It is a tool to improve the management of the Rhine floodway canal. Thank you for submitting this book of catch at the end of the season to a fishing guard of the Federal Brigade or return by mail to the following address: Fishing Federation Locality “La Musau” RD 228, 67203 Oberschaeffolsheim
You will find some practical informations on the blog of the Bas-Rhin Fishing Federation by clicking here
loïc with a big brown trout of the floodway canalflyfishing on the opening of trout fishing in marchHis girlfriend, Sophie, with a big rainbow of the same place
With the downstream of Basle(Switzerland), until Rhinau, in extreme southern of the department of Bas- Rhin (Alsace/France), a part of the river’s water circulates in the channel of Alsace; but there remains a wild part, wedged between this channel, at the french side, and the german motorway, which average width of 50 meters, the power of the current, the richness of watery fauna, make forget this tribute paid to the modernity.
The graylingswere the florets of the Rhine: they are splendid, of complexion nervousness and size: exceeding 33 cm regularly, the fish between 40 and 50 cm were not so rare before 2003. Cause of this rarefaction, fishing for graylings is verbidden til 2023. But one takes also sometimes large powerful brown trouts and the whitefish colonize the calms, with their usual predators, which are the pikes. The atlantic salmons are also coming back.
When you find yourselves in autumn on the gravel pits of the Rhine, you are taken in a true enchantement: attentive of the banks, the blossomings or the fish, you don’t notice the noise of the cars wich circulate on the nearby motorway.
IMPORTANT: Classified in 2nd category of the public domain, fishing is accessible to any fisherman having discharged his piscicultural taxes (french yearly fishing license)
Fishing is not easy there: power of the current, rollers slipping, blossomings sometimes too sparse, other times superabondant, difficult fish, inaccessible stations, etc.. All these conditions discourage sometimes the amateur, but don’t put off the enthusiast.
I hope to be pleased of meeting you a day there, to exchange , like all the flyfishers of the world, our anecdotes which ponctuated our course in this splendid passion of flyfishing
Tuesday, May 12, 2020: Although I do not like its linearity or its environment, and because the end of confinement finally allowed us to go fishing, but the Bruche was soiled by a rainy day, I decided to go do a fishing session at the Rhine floodway canal. I found myself from 3 to 5 pm on the downstream part of the canal, near Plobsheim. (see photos 1 and 3). After talking with, Jean-pierre, a regular on the course, I decided to fish with a streamer because in these sunny hours there was no visible activity and the water was still a little too tinted for the sight nymph. I could observe a few brown caddisflies flying from here and there and a few small mayflies without causing any visible activity of the fish.
In two hours of fishing I had the chance to touch a dozen fishes. If I broke on a fish, for lack of concentration, and I took down 4 trouts after a few minutes of struggle, I would bring 5 with in the net. These were magnificent rainbow trout, measuring between 52 and 58 cm, spilled at the end of containment by the Federation. Very well-shaped, powerful and brawling fish who put the equipment to the test before going into the net. The trout had bitten on my CBO and WBM-2 streamers, the fact of having quickly recorded touches on the olive convinced me that it was “the right color of the day”
Two other fly fishermen met at the water’s edge had also caught beautiful trout with a streamer and it is with a lighter heart that I have finally tasted again the simple joy of holding a (big) fish at the end of a fly rod that I took the way back.
A large rainbow trout, caught with the streamer CBOJean-Pierre, a other flyfiherman with the streamer tooThis 12 mai 2020, the rainbow trout were active
Thursday 15 February2020: 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 surfaceJean Marie fishing with a nympha bleak wihch took a FMF-2
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 theSchirmeck 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 Muhlbachon 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, theBruche,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.
Rainbow trout
Rainbow trout (Onchorynchus Mykiss) is not a native fish in Alsace. However, its location has been very real for about fifty years.
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.
