46 INDIAN FISH AND FISHING. 



stream, and after a month or so they begin again at the top 

 of the hillside as before. 



In addition to the larger weirs and traps, there are minor 

 sorts most extensively employed, especially in the plains — 

 some to capture breeding fish ascending up the smaller 

 watercourses during the rain to deposit their spawn, others 

 to arrest them and their fry attempting to descend the 

 stream as the flood waters recede ; and there is not a 

 district, except perhaps in Sind, where this mode of capture 

 is not carried on. And some officials now speak of the use 

 of these contrivances as communal and prescriptive rights, 

 and hold that their prohibition would be an interference 

 with private property. 



Moveable fishing implements are of two varieties, (i) 

 those manufactured of cotton, hemp, aloe-fibre, coir, or of 

 some such material, and (2) others made of split bamboo, 

 rattan, reed, grass, or other more or less inelastic substances. 

 Large drag-nets (see Plates III. and IV.), having fairly-sized 

 meshes, are used mostly during the dry months, and em- 

 ployed for the purpose of obtaining fish from pools in rivers 

 into which they have retired awaiting the next year's floods. 

 But the moveable nets which occasion the most damage 

 are those with small meshes, and principally employed for 

 taking the fry of the fish as they are first moving about ; they 

 may be cast-nets with fine meshes, wall-nets dragged up 

 some small watercourses, purse-nets similarly used, and even 

 sheets may be thus employed. In some places several 

 cast-nets are joined together, to stop up all passage of fish 

 along a stream, while others are employed above this 

 obstacle ; or several fishermen surround a pool, each armed 

 with a cast-net, and these they throw altogether, giving the 

 fish but little chance of escaping. In Sind the fishermen 

 float down the Indus, in certain suitable localities, upon 



