THE FISH OF MY DREAMS

FISHING for mahseer in a well-stocked submontane river is,
in my opinion, the most fascinating of all field sports. Our
environments, even though we may not be continuously consci-
ous of them, nevertheless play a very important part in the sum
total of our enjoyment of any form of outdoor sport. I am
convinced that the killing of the fish of one's dreams in un-
congenial surroundings would afford an angler as little pleasure

140 Man-eaters of Kumaon

as the winning of the Davis Cup would to a tennis player if
the contest were staged in the Sahara.

The river I have recently been fishing in flows, for some forty
miles of its length, through a beautifully wooded valley, well
stocked with game and teeming with bird life. I had the curiosity
to count the various kinds of animals and birds seen in one day,
and by the evening of that day my count showed, among animals,
sambur, chital, kakar, ghooral, pig, langur and red monkeys;
and among birds seventy-five varieties including peafowl, red
jungle fowl, kaleege pheasants, black partridge and bush quail.

In addition to these I saw a school of five otter in the river,
several small mugger and a python. The python was lying on
the surface of a big still pool, with only the top of its flat head
and eyes projecting above the gin-clear water. The subject was
one I had long wished to photograph, and in order to do this
it was necessary to cross the river above the pool and climb the
opposite hillside; but unfortunately I had been seen by those
projecting eyes, and as I cautiously stepped backwards, the
reptile, which appeared to be about eighteen feet long, sub-
merged, to retire to its subterranean home among the piled-up
boulders at the head of the pool.

In some places the valley through which the river flows is
so narrow that a stone can be tossed with ease from one side
to the other, and in other places it widens out to a mile or more.
In these open spaces grow amaltas with their two-feet-long
sprays of golden bloom, karaunda and box bushes with their
white star-shaped flowers. The combined scent from these flow-
ers fills the air, throbbing with the spring songs of a multitude of
birds, with the most delicate and pleasing of perfumes. In these
surroundings angling for mahseer might well be described as
sport fit for kings. My object in visiting this sportsman's para-
dise was not, however, to kill mahseer, but to try to secure a day-
light picture of a tiger, and it was only when light conditions
were unfavourable that I laid aside my movie camera for a rod.

The Fish of My Dreams 141

I had been out from dawn one day, trying, hour after hour,
to get a picture of a tigress and her two cubs. The tigress was
a young animal, nervous as all young mothers are, and as often
as I stalked her she retired with the cubs into heavy cover.
There is a limit to the disturbance a tigress, be she young or old,
will suffer when accompanied by cubs, and when the limit on
this occasion had been reached I altered my tactics and tried
sitting up in trees over open glades, and lying in high grass near
a stagnant pool in which she and her family were accustomed to
drink, but with no better success.

When the declining sun was beginning to cast shadows over
the open places I was watching, I gave up the attempt, and
added the day to the several hundred days I had already spent
in trying to get a picture of a tiger in its natural surroundings.
The two men I had brought from camp had passed the day in
the shade of a tree on the far side of the river. I instructed
them to return to camp by way of the forest track, and,
exchanging my camera for a rod, set off along the river, intent
on catching a fish for my dinner.

The fashion in rods and tackle has altered, in recent years,
as much as the fashion in ladies' dress. Gone, one often won-
ders where, areTlhe i8-foot greenheart rods with their unbreak-
able accompaniments, and gone the muscles to wield them, and
their place has been taken by light one-handed fly rods.

I was armed with an n-foot tournament trout rod, a reel
containing 50 yards of casting line and 200 yards of fine silk
backing, a medium gut cast, and a one-inch home-made brass
spoon.

When one has unlimited undisturbed water to fish one is
apt to be over-critical. A pool is discarded because the
approach to it is over rough ground, or a run is rejected because
of a suspected snag. On this occasion, half a mile had been
traversed before a final selection was made: a welter of white
water cascading over rocks at the head of a deep oily run

142 Man-eaters of Kumaon

80 yards long, and at the end of the run a deep still pool
200 yards long and 70 yards wide. Here was the place to
catch the fish for my dinner.

Standing just clear of the white water I flicked the spoon
into the run, pulling a few yards of line off the reel as I did so,
and as I raised the rod to allow the line to run through the rings
the spoon was taken by a fish, near the bank, and close to where
I was standing. By great good luck the remaining portion of the
slack line tightened on the drum of the reel and did not foul the
butt of the rod or handle of the reel, as so often happens.

In a flash the fish was off downstream, the good well-oiled
reel singing a paean of joy as the line was stripped off it. The
50 yards of casting line followed by 100 yards of backing were
gone, leaving in their passage burned furrows in the fingers of
my left hand, when all at once the mad rush ceased as abruptly
as it had begun, and the line went dead.

The speculations one makes on these occasions chased each
other through my mind, accompanied by a little strong language
to ease my feelings. The hold had been good without question.
The cast, made up a few days previously from short lengths of
gut procured from the Pilot Gut Coy., had been carefully tied
and tested. Suspicion centred on the split ring: possibly, crack-
ed on a stone on some previous occasion, it had now given way.

Sixty yards of the line are back on the reel, when the slack line
is seen to curve to the left, and a moment later is cutting a strong
furrow upstream the fish is still on, and is heading for the white
water. Established here, pulling alternately from upstream, at
right angles, and downstream fails to dislodge him. Time drags
on, and the conviction grows that the fish has gone, leaving the
line hung up on a snag. Once again and just as hope is being
abandoned the line goes slack, and then tightens a moment
later, as the fish for the second time goes madly downstream.

And now he appears to have made up his mind to leave this
reach of the river for the rapids below the pool. In one strong

The Fish of My Dreams 143

steady run he reaches the tail of the pool. Here, where the
water fans out and shallows, he hesitates, and finally returns to
the pool. A little later he shows on the surface for the first
time, and but for the fact that the taut line runs direct from the
point of the rod to the indistinctly seen object on the far side of
the pool, it would be impossible to believe that the owner of
that great triangular fin, projecting five inches out of the water,
had taken a fly spoon a yard or two from my feet.

Back in the depths of the pool, he was drawn inch by inch
into slack water. To land a big fish single-handed on a trout
rod is not an easy accomplishment. Four times he was stranded
with a portion of his great shoulders out of water, and four
times at my very cautious approach he lashed out, and, return-
ing to the pool, had to be fought back inch by inch. At the fifth
attempt, with the butt of the rod held at the crook of my
thumb and reversed, rings upwards to avoid the handle of the
reel coming into contact with him, he permits me to place one
hand and then the other against his sides and very gently propel
him through the shallow water up on to dry land*

A fish I had set out to catch, and a fish I had caught, but
he would take no part in my dinner that night, for between
me and camp lay three and a half miles of rough ground, half
of which would have to be covered in the dark.

When sending away my n-lb. camera I had retained the
cotton cord I use for drawing it up after me when I sit in trees.
One end of this cord was passed through the gills of the fish
and out at his mouth, and securely tied in a loop. The other
end was made fast to the branch of a tree. When the cord was
paid out the fish lay snugly against a great slab of rock, in
comparatively still water. Otter were the only danger, and to
scare them off I made a flag of my handkerchief, and fixed the
end of the improvised flagstaff in the bed of the river a little
below the fish.
The sun was gilding the mountain tops next morning when

144 Man-eaters of Kumaon

I was back at the pool, and found the fish lying just where I
had left it the previous evening. Having unfastened the cord
from the branch, I wound it round my hand as I descended the
slab of rock towards the fish. Alarmed at my approach, or feel-
ing the vibration of the cord, the fish suddenly galvanized into
life, and with a mighty splash dashed upstream. Caught at a
disadvantage, I had no time to brace my feet on the sloping and
slippery rock, but was jerked headlong into the pool.

1 have a great distaste for going over my depth in these
submontane rivers, for the thought of being encircled by a
hungry python is very repugnant to me, and I am glad there
were no witnesses to the manner in which I floundered out of
that pool. I had just scrambled out on the far side, with the
fish still attached to my right hand, when the men I had instruct-
ed to follow me arrived. Handing the fish over to them to take
down to our camp on the bank of the river, I went on ahead
to change and get my camera ready.

I had no means of weighing the fish and at a rough guess
both the men and I put it at 50 Ib.

The weight of the fish is immaterial, for weights are soon for-
gotten. Not so forgotten are the surroundings in which the sport
is indulged in. The steel blue of the fern-fringed pool where
the water rests a little before cascading over rock and shingle to
draw breath again in another pool more beautiful than the one
just left the flash of the gaily-coloured kingfisher as he breaks
the surface of the water, shedding a shower of diamonds from
his wings as he rises with a chirp of delight, a silver minnow
held firmly in his vermilion bill the belling of the sambur and
the clear tuneful call of the chital apprising the jungle folk that
the tiger, whose pug marks show wet on the sand where a
few minutes before he crossed the river, is out in search of his
dinner. These are things that will not be forgotten and will
live in my memory, the lodestone to draw me back to that
beautiful valley, as yet unspoiled by the hand of man.