SPEARFISHING IN NORMANDY

CHRISTIAN ANDRE AND THE D-DAY WRECKS

Christian André, 51 years old, member of the OMER TEAM FRANCE, is well known as the “Lord of the wrecks” and he is going to tell us how he spearfishes in the evocative waters of 1944 D-DAY…

The stretch of sea between the bay of Grand Vey and Ouistreham, including the 6 beaches of the Normandy landing, mainly has a sandy bottom but thanks to the several wrecks there is a great abundance of fishes with no equal.

Basses, cod fishes, pollacks, conger eels, lobsters and soles are the main inhabitants of the wrecks and thanks to the shelter the latter offer them, these fishes get easily to over 8 kilos.

In the normandy waters there are hundreds of wrecks (mainly distributed in the Omaha beach area) and in most of the cases they originally were liberty ships, floating roads, floating bridges and tanks, but only about 40 of them are good for fishing as all the others are often to small to create an habitat for fishes’ life. Several wrecks can be found between 15 and 30 mt but big fishes can be found only in the deepest ones between 23 and 28 mt.

Although the bass is the undoubted queen of most of the wrecks the floating bridges are the best habitat for bigger specimens. In addition to a perfect technique the bass fishing requires a targeted equipment as many things can complicate a dive.

First of all you should use medium length spear guns as there is often a bad visibility and you almost see the wreck once you get over it and then you need to arm them with the trident (and not the Tahitian spear) as you should stop quickly the run of the fish toward the structures of the wreck in order to avoid making the recovery of the prey very difficult and dangerous.

Also the pollacks, if big enough, can make spear fishers’ life miserable as once they got shot they run furiously toward the bottom and if they can’t find an hole to get in, they turn themselves on a side in order to give more friction in the recovery phase.

Then the nets entangled in the masts and other structures are the other big problem as if you get entangled in them the knife is absolutely useless…for this reason you’d better not dive if you are tired, if there is a bad visibility or if you know there are nets.

An other fundamental aspect of wreck spearfishing is represented by the use of buoys that allow to have a clear idea of your own position on the surface in relation to the wreck below. This is really useful to save time and energy as there often are strong currents that move you away form your diving point.

The immersion should be accurately planned according to the wind and tide forecasts. The high tide is in fact generally accompanied by turbid waters and strong currents, for this reason you should go out fishing with low tide as in this condition you have about a 3 hours window without currents.

The best weather is when the winds blows moderately from south, south-west and with the lowest tide coefficient (28).

The best season instead for fishing in Normandy starts at mid June and gets really interesting between September and November when the water temperature is still 11.5°C. During the winter time then the temperature gets really low and the strong winds make difficult or impossible getting in the water.

Christian André

The emotions of wreck spear fishing and the fascinating big catches are all available in the two DVD’s made by Christian: “CSM sur épaves” and “Jardin secret d’un chasseur d’exception”.

In these films you can enjoy the breathtaking shootings of 8-10 kilos basses and cod fishes swimming quietly in the evocative waters of the world war II wrecks.

For any further info please click the following  link.

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