22 The Mahseer. CHAP. n. 



big fish that you cannot take in bodily, and must select which end of 

 him to commence with, I would select the tail, because of the danger 

 of the hooks being caught in the net, when, with one plunge, the fish 

 can easily break his hook-hold or the gut. That plunge is not unusually 

 made on the fish's first feeling the net touch him, and if, by the hook 

 being hitched in the net, he gets a firm purchase, a break is inevitable. 

 This is doubly important if you are using spinning tackle with many 

 hooks, only one of which perhaps has hold of the fish. But I once had 

 to land a fish for a friend who, in some inexplicable way, had an 

 eighteen-pound mirga (Cirrhina mirgald) hooked by the tail. In that 

 case, of course, I took the fish into the landing-net head foremost. Also 

 in a stream, bring the net up from below stream, so as to allow of the 

 fish falling back with the stream into the net. 



If you are in a boat you should kill your fish very thoroughly before 

 you attempt to get him into the boat, or he may run under your boat, 

 and get an awkward purchase on your line, such as will enable him to 

 break it in one of his last plunges. Keep him well off the boat, and work 

 him about till you can bring him up just where you like, thoroughly 

 exhausted and passive, while your man nets him. But if you can 

 discover a shelving sandbank anywhere near you, and your fish is worth 

 killing, I think it is much better to go ashore and run no risks, for the 

 safest plan is to shelve a fish whenever you can. 



Directly you have your Mahseer safe knock him on the head. You 

 cannot kill a Mahseer of any size as you can a Labeo (page 53 of" Tank 

 Angling ") by hitting him on the side and bursting his air bladder. If 

 you don't kill your Mahseer promptly you may find that, in a boat 

 especially, and armed as he is with hooks, he may contrive to make 

 himself very unpleasant, and perhaps hook you or tear your net, or 

 bang himself about till he breaks your tackle against the boat. So 

 knock him on the head, and don't attempt to take the hooks out till you 

 have, or he may give a sudden jump that may drive the hooks into you. 

 A friend of mine did not find it at all enjoyable sport cutting the hooks 

 out of his own hand. 



There are some people who seem to think the end and object of 

 catching a fish is to eat it, and a rapturous description of glorious sport 

 is too often cut short by a pragmatic inquiry as to what the fish tastes 

 like. To my mind that is a very secondary matter. It is, moreover, a 

 matter on which it is well known that people are not calculated to agree, 



