CHAP. xi. Small Spoons. 159 



running from Ib. to 9 Ibs. ; very seldom, indeed, did we take 

 one under i Ib. and not often over 5 Ibs. or 6 Ibs. They generally 

 averaged between 2 Ibs. and 4 Ibs., and we used to take from three to 

 fifteen fish or thereabouts (I write partly from memory, partly from 

 notes) every morning, and not much less in the evening. Still, I had 

 some thoroughly blank days near Valamhoondy, as experimenters 

 must expect when trying new waters; as even old hands have even 

 amongst their old friends the trout at times. 



On one occasion they fairly put our backs up with their exasperating 

 fastidiousness, so \ve made the men catch us a lot of grasshoppers, 

 which they did very easily. They were brown ones. And with them 

 we played the very deuce with those Carnatic Carp, throwing the 

 grasshoppers like a fly, but tenderly, some of us using them on bare 

 hooks, some on our flies. 



I have also killed Carnatic Carp on spoons of all sizes, up to a 

 Mahseer spoon as big as a dessert-spoon. But a small, hog-backed 

 fly-spoon of inch in length is more their size if you are fishing for 

 them alone. It is illustrated at the end of Chapter VII. 



It is a thing to be remembered that all Indian carps, when they 

 grow to any size, become more or less predatory, and may consequently 

 be taken on a spoon. Even a Labeo, the Rohu, has been known to 

 take a small fish. 



If fishing a large river, which is rocky enough to hold Mahseer as 

 well as Carnatic Carp or its equivalent, one grudges losing any possible 

 chance of the finer fish, the Mahseer, by using the lure chiefly applicable 

 to the lesser fish, the Carnatic Carp; and though Mahseer will also 

 take the larger fly used at the tail of the Carnatic Carp cast, we know 

 that the larger Mahseer are far more partial to the spoon, so in such 

 case you can compromise by reducing your spoon to a size suitable 

 for a Carnatic Carp, and with it fishing the stronger runs in the hope 

 of a Mahseer, and the tails of the runs, the eddies, and the stiller water, 

 in the expectation of a Carnatic Carp. You thus give them both 

 a chance of a look in, and neither of them can complain. A 4o-lb. 

 Mahseer has been caught on a spoon of if inches in length, and 

 the captor thereof habitually uses for Mahseer spoons of to if inches, 

 the last for preference, and a Carnatic Carp of 5f Ibs. has been taken 

 on one of 2\ inches, say the size of a dessert-spoon. Either of them 

 therefore ought to be content with a spoon of i| inches, with No. 7 



