FISHING IN THE EAST 

 Mohammedans, favour his edibility, and find he bears carriage well 

 for introduction to any pond or fort moat they like. This is because he 

 is a breather of atmospheric air, indeed, he would soon drown if kept from 

 the atmosphere. His food is small fish, and especially frogs. He may be 

 taken in any pond, and in the still water of any river, with a one and a half 

 inch spoon, or a small fish of three and a half to four and a half inches 

 long, spun, or attached alive to a float two feet from the surface, or a frog 

 dapping, and also with a worm. Fish near the surface with your labeo 

 rod if you want sport; with a heavier rod he can make no fight. Use gut 

 for preference. He will bite through it now and then, but better so than 

 not getting offers. 



A neat way of setting trimmers for this fish is to run a hook, treble for 

 preference, through the tiniest bit of quite surface skin on the back of a frog, 

 close up to the head, attach the hook to a strong piece of running line, 

 pass the line over the fork of some unyielding bush overhanging the water, 

 and lower away till the frog is in its natural position on the water, 

 with its legs and body under water, and only just its eyes above water, 

 and not an inch of slack. Make the line fast to something inshore that 

 will hold. In this position the frog will be in a direct line below the cord, 

 and will so cover and conceal it from any predatory fish, and any marral 

 taking him will immediately be struck automatically by the bush and 

 taut line, and will be seen splashing on the surface. You can leave the 

 trimmers to do their own business while you are fishing elsewhere. But 

 keep away from the place, as marral are shy. They feed best morning and 

 evening, when they roam in search of food, chiefly frogs, for which also 

 they hide in weeds, and holes in the bank, and under lilies. In the heat of 

 the day they bask, and may be shot with a bullet. But take him in the head, 

 and allow for refraction. He will sink when hit, but native fishermen dive 

 well, and are not encumbered with clothing. 



Marral run to one pound or two pounds each ordinarily, and sometimes 

 to two or three feet long. I have taken them spinning, and a friend took 

 thirty -two in one day weighing together 115 pounds, half of them on a one 

 and a half inch spoon, half on a small fish. 



In North Indian rivers Bagarius YarrelUi, called in the Punjab the 

 goonch, runs large. One rod caught in four days fourteen of them, weighing 

 together, 1,065 pounds, and another took one that weighed 136 pounds, 

 was five feet eight inches long from lip to tail end, the bait having been a 

 twelve or fourteen pound rohu. 



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