no How, When, and Where to Fish for Mahseer. CHAP. vi. 



when the water is 20 feet deep. I should say, therefore, spin about mid- 

 water, and I think you will show your bait advantageously to most fish. 

 If you are often fishing the same water, you should remember 

 where you kill your best fish, for where one good fish has been taken, 

 another of the same size is pretty sure to be found ; the reason being 

 that those fish which lay wait for, instead of searching for, their bait, 

 those which stop in one place waiting and watching for what the stream 

 shall wash down to them, look out for the best places, the places where 

 the chief current of the stream will carry the most food by them, or a 

 favouring eddy will bring it round to them, and there they take up 

 their station behind a rock or stone, so that they themselves may be 

 in comparatively quiet water, but yet in a good position for watching 

 passing events, and as any food comes by them, out they dart, take it, 

 and return to their station. Some such stations are better than others, 

 and the strongest fish take the best. With them it is naturally 



" The brave old rule, the simple plan, 

 That they should take who have the power, 

 And they should keep who can." 



And when that fish has been taken, and his place is vacant, the next 

 strongest takes it. This is markedly the case with trout in English 

 streams, the proportions of which do not vary much from month to 

 month, and is, in my opinion, more or less the case with Mahseer too, 

 though to a less degree, because the rapidly varying size of a stream will 

 in a month or so, or less, make a favourite station an indifferent one. 

 This rapid variation of tropical rivers also brings it about that you are 

 not so dependent with Mahseer, as you are with salmon, on knowing 

 the river, or having some one who does know it to point out to you the 

 exact resting-places or lies of salmon. They are so constantly varying 

 that you must trust, as you would with trout, to your own intuitive eye 

 for where a Mahseer ought to be. But a proper fisherman will readily 

 recognize the most comfortable-looking quarters for a good fish. The 

 power of making a correct diagnosis will be acquired by practice, 

 though there is a spice of nascitur non ft about it too. 



How soon a vacant place is ordinarily reoccupied I do not know. 

 Sometimes the very next day, if I remember rightly. How do fish find 

 out that there is a vacant tenement ? It would seem that they must be 

 giving a look in from time to time to see. 



