Which tense/mode in "peu importait que ca morde ou pas"

Question

Sorry, no accents. In the sentence, I am not sure if you use l'imparfait first, and the second part of the sentence is what? subjunctive or indicative? It sounds strange to me, because in English you would say something like "little did it matter that they bit or not" or maybe "would bite"? (if I translated literally it wouldn't sound right at all: "it didn't matter that IT bites or not" (strange already because the previous sentence talks about several fish). Not quite sure because English is not my first language. But in Spanish we would use the past subjunctive in this sentence, but then in Spanish we have more tenses and we also use a lot more often the subjunctive mode than in French...

Accepted Answer

Bonjour Carolina,
Maarten is correct that "ça morde" is in "Le mode Subjonctif" (Subjunctive mood) as the expression "il est / peu importe que" is followed by Le Subjonctif - see here:Il est [important] que + subjunctive (Le Subjonctif) = It is [important] for [someone] to ... in French
I hope this is helpful.
Bonne journée !

Answer

‘Ça mord’ or ‘Ça mord ?’ is the idiomatic way of saying that, or asking if, ‘the fish (they) are biting’ in French, so don’t try to translate it literally. The full expression is ‘(ça) mordre à l’hameçon’ - equivalent in meaning to the English expression “to take (or be taking) the bait”, or to be biting. (Although literally it is “hook” in French).

https://www.wordreference.com/fren/hameçon

The subjunctive is used because ‘c’est (il est) important que’ requires the subjunctive https://www.lawlessfrench.com/subjunctivisor/il-importe/

PS: You are right about 'importait' - the imparfait of the verb 'importer' is used in the form of the expression 'peu importer de faire qqc'. Passé composé would not be appropriate here as this is not a specific, time-defined event but a typical description of something vaguely defined in time/duration, repeated/habitual and ongoing in the past. https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/importer/41945 https://www.wordreference.com/fren/importer