CHAPTER VI. 

 HOW, WHEN, AND WHERE TO FISH FOR MAHSEER. 



"Give me mine angle; we'll to the river there. 



* * * * I will betray 

 Tawny finned fish ; my bended hooks shall pierce 

 Their slimy jaws." SHAKESPEARE. 



BEING provided with the right lure, be it fly or spinning bait, there is 

 still the question how to use it. Suppose we consider the spinning bait 

 first, in continuation of our last chapter. How should we spin, with the 

 stream, against the stream, or across the stream ? Those who advocate 

 spinning with the stream, or drawing your bait in the same direction as 

 the river is flowing, do so on the same ground as fly fishermen, namely, 

 that all fish lie habitually -with their heads up stream, and that con- 

 sequently you bring your bait down to them, into their mouths as they 

 say, instead of pulling it away from them up stream. But the cases are 

 by no means parallel. What is natural in one case is unnatural in the 

 other, and the secret of good fishing is so closely to imitate nature, that 

 the fish shall not be able to distinguish your bait from its ordinary food. 

 Though the fly lights, or mounting from the bottom sits, on the water's 

 surface, and is carried unresistingly down the stream, the behaviour of 

 the small fish which you have to imitate is very different. It swims up 

 stream just as much as down stream ; indeed, if it did not it would find 

 itself down at the sea in a single season. It swims across also, as much 

 as up and down. Certainly it does sometimes allow itself to drop down 

 stream tail foremost, and that action as well as others may be imitated 

 occasionally, but it is not a common action, and only adopted when 

 the fish has but a short distance to go, or in a rapid. When a fish,, 

 whether large or small, wants to go down stream it almost invariably 

 turns round, and swims down head foremost, for the obvious reason that 



