The Loue river vally, Doubs, France

We've returned from a trip to the Doubs region in eastern France where we tried a little fishing on the Loue river. We have seen quite a bit of trout there before on previous trips, but we never fished there due to a lack of licences. This time, we picked up a couple of weekly licences and tried some lures as the river was much to strong for fly fishing. In the week we were there I didn't even see a trout let alone catch one! What a shame. I did however get quite a bit of practice with my lure casting. Here are some photos of the river.

The 'source' of the river Loue. Actually the river is water from the river Doubs that has gone underground in a few places to the south-east and come out here (see below for how they found this out). The source has some powerful flows and there are a few hydro-electric power stations taking advantage of the force of the water.
A few kilometres downstream, the village of Lods sits picturesquely on the river. As you see the flow is strong after a month of heavy rain. Downstreram from Lods is the town of Ornans and further down again is Chenecey Buillon with it's arched stone bridge over the river.
Normally, there is flow between the central arches and the arches on either side are dry. The area immediately around the bridge itself is a reserve, but the fishing up and down the river here is some of the best on the whole river.
Down from Chenecey is Quingy where we were fishing - or at least trying to fish. The locals suspected that with the heavy rain, most of the fish had been literally washed downstream. We saw a few barbel that were unceremoniously chucked out of the river as they are an alien species and considered a threat to the trout and local species.

How the source of the Loue was found not to be a unique source, but that it is actually a deviation of the Doubs river.
In the summer of 1901 during an accidental fire at the Pernod distilleries at Pontarlier, a million litres of Absinthe was dumped into the river Doubs in an effort to prevent an explosion in the cellars. Absinthe is a green aniseed liqueur. Two days later, the waters of the Loue river was the opaque opalescent white colour and taste of Absinthe and the fish were drunk! The underground channels were thus discovered and were later confirmed by a geological survey.