Spring is coming, the atmosphere is warming up and only a few degrees are missing for the fish, too, to enter their breeding season.
With this in mind, specialists in the aquatic environment intervened on Friday morning in the Bois de Boulogne.
Led by Rodolphe "Roddy" Keraudran, the small group of five people have created cozy love beds for fish in ponds in the woods.
"We are carrying out a fish management operation", explains Rodolphe, fisherman and development officer at the Hauts-de-Seine and West Paris Fishermen's Association (Aappma 92-75).
On the trailer attached to a utility, a small boat and mysterious carpet with long green plastic hairs.
A few hundred meters further, the team is hard at work on the shores of Lake Saint-James.
The famous carpets are artificial spawning grounds that reproduce the effect of aquatic plants.
"They will be shelters for gammares, microcrustaceans like small freshwater shrimps," continues the expert.
Then, these artificial grass beds will also serve as hiding places for the fry and then as a feeding area.
What we do is aid reproduction.
"These ponds are home to carp, tench, perch, roach ..." We encourage and promote the no-kill technique, "he adds.
"We're just giving nature a helping hand"
Meanwhile, Anthony and Sébastien, 25 and 23, tie a concrete ballast and a buoy at each spawning ground.
The two friends, fans of fishing since childhood, have come from Bondy, in Seine-Saint-Denis.
"It's a passion and I wanted to make it my job," assures Anthony, fishing instructor at the Maison de la Pêche et de la Nature in Levallois, which hosts AAPPMA.
Life jacket on the t-shirt, Maxime, 23, embarks on the walnut hull to cross the pond and swing a spawning ground overboard.
For eleven years, he has not missed any training, no internship provided by the fishing house where he is currently in civic service at the museum and at the aquarium.
Dozens of meters caught in the branches and abandoned: part of the sad results of cleaning the banks.
DR
The spawning grounds are put in the water at the level of the banks.
“Where plants don't have roots deep enough to submerge underwater.
We are just giving nature a helping hand, ”sums up Rodolphe.
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A stone's throw from Meaux (Seine-et-Marne), Mégane, 29, grabs a plastic bag.
Also animator at the fishing house and predator fishing enthusiast - "we have to move!"
», The young woman begins to scan the shore: The laying of spawning grounds in the Saint-James and then Superior ponds is coupled with the cleaning of the banks.
Balls of fishing line tangled in the trees
In addition to rubbish, the group targets fishing lines abandoned on the spot.
It's a whole skein that Maxime and Rodolphe recover, an interlacing of threads hanging from a branch.
Their hunting board also includes fishing weights, an electric scooter… A great classic with bicycles and supermarket trolleys.
“On the other hand, I did not expect to find so much thick thread, comments Rodolphe, worried.
It is used in particular for carp fishing.
People cast their line and it gets caught in the trees.
And again, we will have to go to the pole pruner for those who are stuck in height… ”
Faced with this scourge, which is dangerous for the ecosystem and for aquatic birds, there is a solution, the bait boat: a scale model that takes the line and the hook exactly where the fisherman wants.
Problem that the town hall of Paris fears that this technique will attract model-making enthusiasts in addition to fishermen.
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The AAPPMA 92-75 troops have no time to waste.
The reproduction period of the fish will begin within a few days, as soon as the water temperature crosses 15-16 ° C.
Next step, the laying of two spawning grounds in the reservoir of the Reservoir (at too low a level this Friday due to topographic surveys) and within a few weeks on the Hautes-Bornes pond, replenished last year, in the Chanteraines park, in Gennevilliers and Villeneuve-la-Garenne.