CHAP in. Estimating Weight of Mahseer. 37 



Dr. Day, in his " Monograph of Indian Cyprimdse," Part II., 

 under Barbus (barbodes) tor, writes : 



"A noted sportsman in the N.W. Provinces, writing to me, says his 

 largest fish taken with a rod and line was captured in the River Poonch, 

 24 miles from Jhelum ; it measured from snout to bifurcation of tail 3 feet 

 ii inches, and weighed 62lbs. . . . The cube of a fish's length gives his 

 weight in pounds ; fish may vary a pound or t\vo according to condition, 

 but the test is wonderfully correct." 



I confess to a lack of confidence in this rule myself, for I think that 

 fish of the same species vary, much, not only with the condition of the 

 same individual at different seasons and in different rivers and climates, 

 but from individuality of figure, contracted probably from accidents of 

 feeding in earliest youth. And the rule could not have equal applica- 

 bility to Mahseer of the differing contours of Plate I. and Plates II. and 

 III., for it takes no note of girth. This omission of the girth is met by 

 a kindly correspondent writing me that he has found the following 

 pretty correct. " Take," he says, " the length and girth in inches. 

 Add together and divide by two. This gives the weight in pounds 

 pretty near." Possibly it does when fish run over a certain weight, say 

 over ten or fifteen pounds, but it surely must be very much out when they 

 are smaller. For instance, a Mahseer of twelve inches long, without 

 adding anything for girth, can never weigh six pounds. And if this be 

 granted then the question arises at what point does the inaccuracy 

 commence and end. Is there any scientific basis on which to give 

 it definite limits ? To "my thinking there is not, and so I will frankly 

 admit that I have ever regarded these and other methods of arriving at 

 the weight of a Mahseer by its measurements as an unreliable process, 

 bound to involve inaccuracy and very little better than simply gauging 

 the fish by the eye, a process the result of which could never be 

 recorded as an ascertained fact. 



Weighing Mahseer. The only reliable way of arriving at the 

 true weight of a fish is to weigh it, and to do so as soon after capture 

 as possible, because a fish loses much of its weight soon after it is out 

 of the water, especially in a drying tropical climate. If in even your 

 body, gentle angler, more than half of the constituent parts (58*5 per 

 cent.) are water, let alone the whisky, you will allow something in a 

 fish for " drying up " on being taken out of the water. A forty-six pound 

 Mahseer lost two pounds of its weight in about an hour, while being 



