74 Spinning for Mahseer. CHAP, v 



and in Hindustani dok, is much tougher, and consequently keeps its 

 good looks much longer on a hook. Its lips, which is a great point, are 

 stronger, and its mouth being wider, it readily takes in a larger sinker. 

 It may be easily recognised by the similarity of its general appearance 

 to that of the marral, Ophiocephalus striatus, figured in Plate xiv., for it 

 is one of the same family and genus, though small. It has small scales, 

 looking to the ordinary observer like a scaleless skin. It is a bottom- 

 feeder, always among the stones, and the young are to be found in any 

 small pool adjoining rice-fields, whence they can be readily taken by 

 bailing out, or by small boys with a worm, or by damming up any small 

 stream, and turning it on to a dry reaped rice-field, when they will 

 follow the stream out on to the rice-field and are easily caught. This 

 is the simplest way of catching a number in a short time. Your grooms 

 or other camp followers can do it for you. These fish keep alive in a 

 bait-can longer than any fish I know ; but they are great hands at 

 jumping out if it is not closed. Mr. Dunsford, to whom I had intro- 

 duced them, graphically writes of them as " next door to immortal, if 

 kept in a pot of water." A wet cloth alone will keep them alive for 

 an hour or so. 



Though I say loach-like, the reader will please understand that I 

 mean like in general semblance only to the eye of the casual observer, 

 and not in characteristics to the closer examiner ; for it is really of the 

 same genus as the marral, though a span is its utmost length. My 

 desire is to make myself intelligible to the general reader, the more 

 critical one must therefore please not quarrel with me for, or conclude 

 ignorance from, laxity of expression like the above, any more than he 

 would conceive a person ignorant of the earth's rotation for saying the 

 sun set. 



As to what is the best size for a bait to be, it must, I think, remain 

 a moot point, dependent very much on the fancy of the fisherman. 

 Some have an idea that the larger the bait you use, the larger will be 

 the fish you catch. But my humble opinion is that we do not always 

 take as big a bite of cake as ever our mouths will hold, and I am quite 

 sure that very fine pike and 30 Ib. salmon have been killed with a very 

 minnow for bait. I have myself seen a pike of 3 feet taken on a roach 

 not as many inches in length. The use of a large bait may perhaps 

 serve the purpose of choking off the smaller fish, and allowing the bigger 

 ones to have it all to themselves, but I very much doubt it, for it is 



