UNWELCOME COMPANIONS AT A POOL. 189 



gives in. It is, however, better on the table than on the rod, 

 being richer flavoured and less bony than the mahseer. A 

 good basket of small mahseer, and a trout-like fish called by the 

 natives "golabee," which is as lively and strong as any real trout 

 of equal weight, can often be caught with fly in the smaller 

 streams of the Doon. I have taken dozens of both kinds com- 

 bined in a clay, averaging generally nearly half a pound, with 

 an occasional fish (mahseer) of several pounds thrown in. 



I have already drawn comparisons between salmon and 

 mahseer fishing, which may have served to show that, as far 

 as sport is concerned, they are about equal. But there are 

 episodes attending the latter which occasionally make it 

 more exciting some might call it unpleasant than the 

 former. I know an instance of a tiger walking out of a 

 jungle beside the river, coolly taking a drink at the pool and 

 a look at the man who was fishing it, much to his astonish- 

 ment, and doubtless consternation, and then, to his great 

 relief, as quietly retiring. And once when I was fishing in 

 one of the forest streams in the Eastern Doon, my two little 

 dogs, which were hunting about after jungle-fowl, disturbed 

 a tiger in a thicket not very far behind me. But such occur- 

 rences were rare. 



Good as the fishing in the Doon streams is, it would be 

 even better were it not for the wholesale system of poaching 

 carried on by native fishermen to supply the markets of 

 Dehra Doon and the sanitarium of Mussoorie in the hills 

 close above it. The modus operandi which is most destruc- 

 tive, is placing a small-meshed net across the tail of some 

 shallowish pool in any of the smaller streams where the fish 

 run up from the large rivers to spawn, and then driving the 

 fish with sticks and stones from a long way up-stream down 

 into the pool thus netted. On the drivers reaching the head 

 of this, a weir is made across it to divert the stream. The 

 result is that the fish in the pool so drained remain stranded, 

 the larger ones only being collected, while the small fry are 



