50 Circumventing the Mahseer. CHAP. iv. 



much safer, to give the preference to clear water, the colouring ever so 

 slightly, though beneficial to that extent, being a very touch-and-go 

 business. Artificial colouring of the water has on trout the same effect 

 as natural colouring from rainfall, and it is a semi-poaching dodge, never 

 condescended to by me, dear reader, no, not even as a boy, to puddle a 

 small stream, and then take them out with a worm, and this at times 

 when the day is so hot and bright that they will not look at a fly ; but 

 with a Mahseer, if the river is coloured in the middle of the fine season, 

 say, by the drainage from rice-fields, freshly ploughed and swamped for 

 the second crop, you will find it fatal. And colouring from melted 

 snows has the same fatal effect. This peculiarity of the Mahseer is 

 more against good fishermen than it is against tyros, because it is exactly 

 opposed to all the experiences of the former, and those who do know 

 something about fishing in England are consequently more likely to be 

 on the wrong tack in India, than those who know nothing or next to 

 nothing about fishing in general, for they would naturally arrange to fish 

 at the very time when in India they are least likely to have sport. I 

 have, however, tested this question pretty thoroughly, and am quite satis- 

 fied that it may be laid down as a safe rule, that it is useless to fish for 

 Mahseer except in clear water ; it must be at least so clear that you can 

 see the small pebbles at the bottom with ease in four feet of water, and 

 it may be as much clearer as ever you like. You need not be the least 

 bit afraid if it is as clear as crystal, indeed it ordinarily is so through all 

 the best fishing months of the year. I have fished in vain with the 

 water so far cleared after a spate that I could see the small pebbles in 

 two feet of water, and that with great patience and diligence in known, 

 good, easily commanded water, and with a large and very bright spoon, 

 .and yet I only stirred two fish, and even they ran short. I conceive I 

 must, from knowing localities, have taken my bait very close to their 

 noses, and kept it dallying there provokingly, and that even then they 

 missed it from visual obliquity in the coloured water. I am for bright 

 water, therefore, and in this respect the English fisherman must forego 

 his old creed, and adopt a new faith as fully as did the thorough-going 

 young scamp of an undergraduate who, unable otherwise to find fit 

 expression for the radical change for the better that had taken place in 

 his resolutions, informed his friends that he had not only " turned over 

 a new leaf" as parentally entreated, but several libraries. 



I may here mention that " Mountaineer " is quoted by A. O. H. 



