1 62 The Carnatic Carp. CHAP. xi. 



they are not high enough, and are rough to sit on. If you go- 

 fishing, it is presumed you go for pleasure, and your pleasure will 

 be very much marred if you are sitting all the while in constrained 

 positions which grow more and more trying with time. For a trip 

 such as I am proposing a comfortable seat is as much a part of 

 your fishing gear as your rod and line, and it should be got ready 

 beforehand and taken with you. You may try ever so much to- 

 keep yourself up to the mark, but it is impossible you can keep 

 on fishing nearly as well while increasingly uncomfortable, as if you 

 were thoroughly at ease and enjoying it. 



For eating oneself, I do not think the Carnatic Carp are worth 

 keeping, though they are much better than the common English carp 

 (Cyprinus carpio), which some people manage to clamber outside 

 somehow. To those about to do so, my advice is, don't. 



Our Carnatic friend is not so active a fish as the Mahseer. It does 

 not dash off like the Mahseer, it takes out very little line, but goes 

 down in deep water, and bores about like a log without very much 

 change of place. It is, therefore, not a difficult fish to kill. It never 

 jumps into the air like a trout, nor shakes its mouth in the air like a 

 pike. It has a leathery, toothless mouth, and gives as good a hook- 

 hold as the Mahseer. Its teeth are, like the Mahseer's and all carp's, 

 pharyngeal or in the throat. Still, do not think otherwise than kindly 

 of him, for is he not a fly-taker ? And is it not a great thing to get a 

 fish that takes the fly better than anything else ? 



But it does not take the fly after the manner of the Trout, the 

 Salmon, and the Mahseer, rising to it from its place in the stream, 

 taking it quickly in at a gulp, and then returning to its position. On 

 the contrary, it takes the fly more as the dace does. 



It swims leisurely up to it, and just sucks it in. It then does not 

 sink to the bottom so as to oppose its weight to and tauten the line at 

 once. It stops where it is, or continues to swim leisurely about, or it 

 lets itself be carried leisurely down stream to where it was before. 

 And if while doing this it discovers that your fly is a tasteless, un- 

 comfortable-feeling feather, instead of the juicy morsel it had expected, 

 it simply spits it out. It is a pretty little accomplishment commonly 

 practised in polite circles among all fish, and some of them are great 

 adepts at it. Chelmo restrains is a gentleman I would almost back 

 against a Yankee at expectoration. He makes his living by it. He 



