The Atlantic coast of France is, for a fishing cruiser, a more generous place than the Mediterranean. The water is greener and colder, which puts off the underwater photographers, but it is rich, and the tides that make navigation a chore are exactly what concentrate the fish. From a small boat (and most of mine have been under ten metres) you can feed the crew off this coast with very little tackle and a basic grasp of when to drop a line.
I will start with the legal frame, because it shapes everything you do, then move to where and how.
What you can and cannot do, briefly
Sea fishing for the pot needs no licence in France, from a boat or the shore. That simplicity ends the moment you motor up an estuary into fresh water, where you need a permit, but on the salt you are free to fish for your own consumption. You may never sell the catch. The full picture is in the visitor guide to a sea fishing licence, and it is worth a read before you sail, because "no licence" is not "no rules".
The rules that bite are size limits and bag limits. The big one is sea bass, which must be 42 centimetres minimum to keep, well above what many UK and Dutch anglers expect. Bass also runs on a recreational daily limit that the authorities revise year to year, currently in the low single figures per angler, and a seasonal calendar, so check the current French figure before you sail. Sea bream allowances are more generous, with a daily cap in the region of seven fish. Bass must also be marked when landed by cutting a portion of the tail fin, a rule designed to stop recreational fish entering the market. Get the bass rules right and the rest is easy.
Read the tide before you read the chart
On the Atlantic coast the tide does the deciding. Slack water is dead water for most species; the fish feed when the stream runs and pushes bait over the structure they hunt around. The two hours either side of low water and the build of the flood are when I fish, and I plan the day around them rather than around the clock.
The big tidal range here, which can exceed several metres on a high coefficient, also exposes vast sand and mud flats around the Pertuis Charentais and the basins. That matters two ways: it concentrates fish into the channels as the water drops, and it can leave your boat dry if you anchor carelessly to fish a flat. Know your sounding and your falling tide.
Where the fish are off this coast
The Atlantic coast from the Vendee down to the Basque border is mostly sand, with patches of rock and reef and a scattering of islands, and the fishing follows the structure.
- Sandy bottoms and surf lines hold bass, which hunt in the white water and along the edges of banks. Drift a soft plastic or a surface lure across a sandbank on a making tide and you are in business. The waters around Ile de Re and Oleron are classic bass ground.
- Estuary mouths, where the Gironde and the Charente dump nutrients into the sea, are bait magnets and therefore predator magnets. Fish the seaward edge on the ebb.
- Wrecks and reef off the coast hold pollack, wrasse, and bream, which take baited hooks fished close to the bottom. A simple paternoster rig with ragworm or mackerel strip will catch you a varied supper.
- Mid-water and surface, on a calm summer day, the mackerel shoals move through and you can fill a bucket on feathers in minutes when they are in. They are the easy, reliable family fish of this coast.
Tackle for a small cruising boat
You do not need a rod locker full of gear. Cruising space is precious and one telescopic rod earns its keep.
A medium spinning outfit (around a 7 to 9 foot rod, a 4000-size reel, 20lb braid) covers almost everything you will do from a small boat: spinning lures for bass, dropping feathers for mackerel, and bottom-fishing with bait. Carry a string of mackerel feathers, four to six hooks, the silver or tinsel kind that flash in the sun, because they are the most useful single item aboard. Add a few soft plastic lures in white and amber for bass, a handful of paternoster rigs and hooks for bottom fishing, and a small selection of weights from an ounce up to four or five for working in a tideway. That, a bucket, a knife, and a pair of pliers is the whole kit.
The unglamorous essentials matter more than the rods. A landing net (a thrashing bass at the rail is how rigs get lost), a measuring stick or a marked rail so you can check that 42cm without guessing, and a cool box with ice, because a fish killed and chilled at once is a different meal from one that has flapped warm in a bucket for an hour.
A morning's fishing, hour by hour
To make this concrete, here is a typical productive morning off Oleron in July, the kind that fills the cool box without much effort.
I check the tide table the night before and find low water is around 0700. I am up at first light, partly because dawn is when the fish feed and partly because the wind on this coast usually fills in by midday and chops the sea up. From the anchorage I move the boat to the seaward edge of a sandbank I marked the previous evening, where the chart shows the bottom shelving from two metres to six. As the flood starts to make, the bait moves up onto the bank and the bass follow.
First hour, on the building flood, I drift the bank with a soft plastic lure, casting up-tide and working it back along the bottom. This is the bass window. Second hour, as the run strengthens, I switch to feathers and drop them through any shoal of mackerel that shows on the sounder or under the birds. By the time the tide is halfway up, the run is too strong to fish the lure cleanly, so I anchor on the edge of a patch of reef and bottom-fish with mackerel strip for bream and wrasse while the crew has breakfast. By the time the wind gets up around ten o'clock, supper is in the box and we are back at anchor.
None of this requires skill so much as paying attention to the tide and being on the water early. The fish keep the same hours every day; you just have to keep them too.
Keep it humane, keep it legal, keep it eatable
Dispatch fish you intend to keep quickly, return undersized fish to the water gently and at once, and do not over-fish a spot just because they are biting. The bag limits exist because this coast has been hammered, and a visiting cruiser taking only supper is part of the solution, not the problem.
A few practical habits keep you out of trouble. Carry a tape so you never guess a borderline bass. Cut the tail mark on any bass you land, on the spot. And if you are unsure whether you have wandered into fresh water (estuaries blur the line), assume you need a permit and stop. The Gendarmerie Maritime do check, and an undersized bass in your cool box is an expensive supper.
Done properly, this coast feeds you. A morning on the tide off Oleron, a bucket of mackerel and a legal bass, and you have dinner for the crew that no harbour restaurant can match. The Mediterranean is prettier underwater, but for putting food on the cabin table, the Atlantic wins.
