FISHING IN THE EAST 



By H. S. THOMAS, C.S.I. 



I URN we now to the East. Are there sporting fish there as well 

 as in Great Britain, Europe, and the West ? Let us see. The 

 mighty mahseer will hold his own for sport in any lands, and has 

 novel peculiarities which lend a charm of their own, calling for 

 study and mastering, meaning to the angler "more worlds to 

 conquer." The trout has a typical brother in the baril; the pike 

 finds competitors in the marral, or pike of Indian waters, and the six-foot 

 long freshwater shark, and siluroids of still greater weight; and as for 

 carp, dace, roach and tench, and such-like minor fry, they are crowded 

 out in sorts and sizes and sporting peculiarities by the seetul, the carnatic 

 carp, the labeo, and many more of which anon. Estuarials, too, and sea- 

 fish are well represented. Bear with them, then, bear with them, dear 

 Britisher, though they are foreigners in a sub -tropical clime, for they 

 all have the special recommendation that they gladden the heart of the 

 exile in the East. It will need much compression to present, in a practically 

 useful form, their several attractions, their virtues and their vices, within 

 the compass allottable in such a comprehensive work as the present. 



THE MAHSEER 



Commence we with the top-sawyer of them all for sport, the mighty 

 mahseer. And the following record may be encouraging. The "Fishing 

 Gazette" of December 7, 1912, contains an angler's letter quoting a 

 bag made in 1908, which gives some idea of mahseer fishing in the 

 Irrawaddy, in Burmah: "Twelve days' actual fishing; forty-one fish 

 landed (i.e., besides five times broken and two big fish lost), averaging 

 thirty-five and a half pounds. Total weight, 1,466 pounds, largest ninety 

 pounds; length sixty inches, girth thirty-four inches," and the writer 

 recalls two mahseer of 103 and 104 pounds having been caught in suc- 

 cessive seasons near Coorg, in the Madras Presidency. The captor, Mr 

 C. E. Murray- Ay nsley, himself has verified the weights to me, and so did 

 Rowland Ward, who stuffed them, and several others kindly endorse the 

 weights. While some few have been taken over 100 pounds, weights from 

 three to thirty pounds are of everyday occurrence. Their size depends 

 much on the size of the river fished, and their colours vary with localities. 

 MM 265 



