SOME GAME FISHES OF INDIA 



Another game Indian catfish is the Tengara, while the Kor» 

 in Assam has been taken at sixty pounds, and the Poongah at 

 twenty. They all take live bait, or a spoon. One of the most 

 extraordinary of the Indian fishes is the Chitala (Nolopterus^ 

 cMtala), a big humpback, small-headed creature, built on the 

 lines of the sacred ox, that elbows tourists out of the way in the 

 narrow streets of the cities of the Orient ; at least it has a great 

 hump and a ridiculous fin on its back. They are silvery and at- 

 tractive, and judged from appearances the last fish to leap. 

 But read Thompson's enthusiastic account of the play of the 

 fish in his Fishing in India. 



The game fishes of India are too numerous to even enumerate 

 in a single chapter, and I can but refer to some of the most 

 notable, as the Batchwa, that takes a fly from March on, at 

 l*farora, and the Pupta at Delhi and Bisalpore. I have referred 

 to the murral or OpMocephcHus, one of the most remarkable of 

 all fishes for its nest or hibernating habits. The drying up of a 

 tank or a pond does not worry the murral ; it merely burrows, 

 and like a bear sleeps away the bad season, thus giving rise to 

 the wonder of the remarkable rain of fishes, the rain merely 

 faUing in a dry pond and releasing the murral, which I might 

 say has been fished for by a friend with a spade, very much 

 as the farmer digs potatoes. 



In general appearance the murral does not appeal to the 

 western angler. He is a little too eel-Uke, and uncanny ; but in a 

 general way closely resembles the beautiful kelp-fish of Santa 

 Catalina kelp beds. Its head is small and pointed, the eye, as 

 in the tarpon, at the end of the head. It has a long dorsal and 

 ventral fin, calling to mind that of the California whitefish. 

 The tail is rounded like that of the Florida jewfish, so that 

 the angler might assume that it was a sluggish bottom-loving 

 fish, and it is said that it frequents holes in the bank. 



In angling for the murral, mahseer tackle may be used, or a 

 light rod and a small spinner. The Murral looks upon a frog 

 with a not unfriendly eye, and there are divers ways of torturing 



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