Cephalopods caught me by accident. I was anchored in the Gulf of Morbihan one March, far too early in the year for anything sensible, jigging half-heartedly off the stern, when a cuttlefish clamped onto a lure I had only meant to clean the weed off. It came up the side of the boat, looked at me, and squirted a pint of ink over the cockpit sole. I was hooked, it turns out, more than it was.
Squid and cuttlefish are some of the best eating you can pull out of French water, and south Brittany is one of the finest grounds in Europe for them. The technique, eging, is simple, cheap, and oddly addictive. Here is how I do it, and when.
Cuttlefish first, because the timing is everything
Cuttlefish (seiche in French, Sepia officinalis) run on a calendar you can almost set your watch by. They move inshore to spawn in spring, arriving around the spring equinox in mid-March on the biggest tides, and they stay through the warmer months. In the Bay of Morbihan, between March and September, the cuttlefish lay somewhere between 18 and 40 million eggs on the seagrass and on the artificial cuttle-traps researchers put out, which tells you the scale of what passes through this water.
Temperature drives the whole thing. Spawning kicks off as the water warms, and if winter water stays above 10C it can run almost year-round, which is why mild Atlantic winters produce early seasons. The practical upshot for a cruiser: April and May, on the spring tides, is prime cuttlefish time in the Gulf of Morbihan and the bays around it. Get there for the equinoctial springs and you are fishing the arrival.
Squid (calmar) are more of an autumn proposition, working the same egi technique but later in the year, from roughly September into the winter, often after dark around harbour lights. Both fall to the same kit, so you can rig once and chase whichever is in season.
Eging: the egi, and almost nothing else
Eging is fishing with an egi, a weighted jig shaped like a shrimp or small fish, dressed in cloth and bristling with a crown of upturned barbless spikes that snag the cephalopod's tentacles rather than hooking through flesh. You cast or drop it, let it sink, then work it up off the bottom in sharp little hops, pausing between each so it flutters down enticingly. The take is rarely a bang; more often the line just feels heavy, as if you have caught the bottom, and then the bottom starts pulling back.
Sizes are worth getting right.
- Standard egis run from size 2.0 to 4.0, weighing roughly 12 to 25 grams. The larger, heavier ones get down in a tideway and suit deeper water.
- Light eging uses smaller jigs, 1.8 to 3.0, with 2.5 the workhorse size, fished on lighter tackle in shallow or calm water. This is the more delicate, playful version and it is deadly in harbours.
- For cuttlefish specifically, work the egi close to the bottom over sand, mud, mixed ground, or seagrass near rocks and coves, which is exactly where they sit.
A light spinning rod, a small reel, braided line for feel, and a pocketful of egis in a few colours is the whole outfit. The same medium rod you use for fishing the Atlantic coast from a small boat will do, but a dedicated light eging rod makes it far more fun.
Depth, tide, and time of day
Cuttlefish are caught by boat across a useful range of depth, typically 6 to 30 metres, while in harbour areas they come right up, found anywhere between the surface and about 10 metres. That means you have options: drift the deeper edges of a channel from the boat, or potter into a port and fish the walls in the shallows.
Tide and light do the rest. Dawn, dusk, the dark, and a moving tide produce the best action, the same windows that work for most predators. I have had my best sessions on the last of the ebb into slack, fishing the egi slow and deep, when the run eases enough to keep the jig near the bottom without dragging. Bright, slack, midday water is the hardest.
This is fishing you can do from a cruising boat at anchor without going anywhere, which makes it perfect for a quiet evening in a south Brittany anchorage when the crew want supper and you want a job to do.
Where to fish them in south Brittany
South Brittany is cephalopod country, and a few areas stand out. The Gulf of Morbihan itself is a nursery, all sand, mud, and seagrass, with the kind of moving tide through its narrows that gets cuttlefish feeding. The catch is that the gulf has fierce currents at its mouth and a lot of moored boats and oyster lines, so fish the slacker corners and the edges of the channels rather than the main stream.
Out in the open, the bays around Quiberon and the Houat and Hoedic islands hold cuttlefish over the mixed ground in spring, and you can drift the edges from the boat in 10 to 20 metres. The shallow, weedy bays inside Belle-Ile fish well in the early season too.
For squid in autumn, harbours and marina entrances after dark are the classic spots. Squid follow the lights at night to hunt the small fish drawn to them, so a pontoon berth with a streetlight overhead becomes a fishing platform once the season turns. It is the one time the marina, normally hopeless for fishing, comes good.
A word on the boat traffic and the bottom: cuttlefish sit on seagrass, and seagrass is increasingly protected. You are fishing over it, not anchoring into it, so there is no conflict, but it is a reminder to anchor in clear sand and leave the meadows alone, the same discipline that governs anchoring across the region.
Cleaning and eating, and the inevitable ink
A word of warning that the Morbihan taught me: cuttlefish and squid ink, copiously, when stressed and again when you handle them. Land them in a bucket, not on your nice teak, and do the messy work over the side or on a board you can sluice down. The ink stains, and saltwater plus sun bakes it in.
Cleaning is quick once you have done a couple. Pull the head and innards from the body, find and remove the cuttlebone (the white internal shell) from a cuttlefish or the clear plastic-like quill from a squid, peel off the skin, and rinse. The tentacles are good eating too once you have removed the beak. The ink sac, if you can keep it intact, is the prize for a risotto or a black pasta sauce.
Cuttlefish wants either very fast cooking or very slow, nothing in between, or it turns to rubber. A quick sear over high heat for a couple of minutes, or a long braise. Squid is the same logic. Either way it is some of the freshest, cheapest protein you will eat afloat, and you caught it off the back of your own boat.
If you want to widen the menu beyond cephalopods, the same coast is generous with shellfish and finfish, and I have written up catching and cooking seafood more broadly. But for sheer reliability and reward against minimal kit, a box of egis and the spring cuttlefish run is hard to beat.
