Mark Nicolaides Indian Adventure Part 2

Yesterday, I told you how I’ve recently been over to India’s Cauvery River fishing for the mahseer for the first time. That’s right, never done it before… a complete newbie at this type of fishing…. here’s how I got on.

 

The thing is, nearly all the fishing articles you read, have been written by some ‘expert’ or ‘star’ angler … and they’re only ever going to tell you about some exceptional session. That could be because they’ve caught a massive specimen or because there’s been some other sort of major event happen during the session.

We all like to read about these sorts of things because their accounts are inspiring, entertaining, etc… but the trouble is, we never get to hear from the ‘ordinary’ angler who doesn’t necessarily go out and fish a huge number of hours per week and catch anything particularly out of the ordinary.

These anglers are typically people who have an ‘average’ level skill but will still catch a few particularly note worthy specimens from time to time because if you go fishing enough, you’re surely likely to get something big in the end. It’s a numbers game… the secret to fishing, is turning up in the first place… if you roll the dice often enough, you’re gonna eventually get a double six.

Before I went to India, like most anglers, I’ve seen all those pictures of anglers holding up those monster mahseer. Beautiful looking creatures that have run the angler ragged through boulder strewn rapids and almost shredded his line to smithereens. Of course, when you see those sorts of things, you imagine catching one of those fish yourself and getting some wonderful pictures to brag to your mates about. But we all know that this sort of thing isn’t really unrealistic. Yes I know, some anglers have gone out there first time and caught a monster at their first attempt, but generally speaking, an angler is unlikely to go there for first time and pull out a giant. The ones you read about represent only a small fraction of all the anglers that did exactly the same thing. So…. generally speaking, what can you expect to catch during an average week in the Cauvery River, fishing for mahseer?

Before setting off for India, I made an attempt to find out what’s actually in the river these days. You know, whether there are any monsters still in the river. Yes… there were monsters caught a few years ago, but I couldn’t give a damn about that… all I want to know is what’s in there NOW.

First all, from what I read and gleamed from a few other anglers was that there were a lot of smaller mahseer about but the abundance of big ones that were being caught 10 or so years ago… they just weren’t there. Well, from that I’ve seen and discovered from Dave Plummer, that picture of those monsters not being around anymore is not true. There are massive mahseer in the Cauvery River… right now… and in viable numbers… and some have caught this year. I never saw any, but that doesn’t mean a thing. Believe me - they’re there alright.

Throughout my week’s stay in Galibore Fishing Camp, Dave showed me a number of pictures of mahseer around the 70 and 80lb mark. Recent photographs, too. Not fish caught years ago. Fish caught a few days before my arrival. When I was in the camp, nothing larger than 40 to 50lbs was caught – but these are still considered really good fish, you certainly wouldn’t be wanting to shake one of those off the hook.

When I was there, most the fish were caught in single figures. And there are loads of them. Seriously, there are hundreds of the things. When you cast out a soft ball of ragi (local bait made from millet), you’re constantly getting loads of pulls and tugs on the rod where loads of these small mahseer pluck and pull at your hook bait. If you were to sit there with a ball of soft ragi on your hook and scale down the tackle, you could easily catch 50 mahseer in a day. In fact, there were two anglers in the camp when I was there who went down to the river every lunchtime armed with a couple of balls of soft ragi and scaled down tackle, and proceeded to pull out 10 or so mahseer in just a couple of hours fishing.

Most of these fish will be no larger than 15lbs or so, but the point being, catching a mahseer in a week’s fishing at the Galibore Fishing Camp is not problem. Catching one or two of the larger fish is considerably more difficult.

When speaking to Dave, he said that in a typical week’s fishing, you’ll have one or two chances of landing a better fish 30lbs+ but you’ve got make it count. The chances don’t come along that often. On one hot afternoon, I decided I’d take a swim in the river with my waterproof camera and try to grab a few shots of some mahseer underwater. What I saw was amazing.

The river is full of fish! Mahseer… and loads of them. I can see why you get a never ending stream of bites when fishing with soft ragi. First of all, I just sort of swam around at random and saw loads of fish, but I couldn’t get them close enough to get a decent shot of them. Then Ade Kiddell, who was fishing the same area I was wallowing around in, suggested I take in a large ball of ragi to entice the fish in close enough so I get them clear enough on the camera.

It worked… time after time, hordes of small mahseer came up to the bait attacked the ragi like a shoal of piranhas. The fish were so numerous and hungry that I even hand fed one of Ade’s hookbaits to a mahseer of about 10lbs… unfortunately, the fish was lost in the rocks!

Overall, my impression of the Cauvery River around the Galibore Fishing Camp was that there was an abundance of mahseer in general, many of these were singles. I mean loads of them, catching a few is not a problem. What about the slightly larger fish? There are also quite a few fish double figure fish to around 20lbs. It was unusual for a day to pass without someone in the camp catching a double or two. When you get above 25lbs, the fish start to thin out. You could easily go through the whole week and not catch anything above 25lbs.

From what I could tell, most weeks will see one or two fish caught up to around 40 to 50lbs, but above that, fish of 60lbs are not caught every week, however, over this past season, there a number of 70’s and 80’s caught… even one or two 90’s, too. The biggest I heard of was a 98lb fish. Fish over 100lbs have been caught in the last year or so…. as you can see, the big mahseer are definitely there, so when you’re sitting there, the next bite really could be a monster.

In a nutshell: there are loads of small mahseer, quite a few fish up to 25lbs or so, thereafter they’re thinner on the ground, but the massive mahseer are still there. Catch up on the next part of my adventures in India soon.

PS. As you’ve just read, I went for a swim in the Cauvery River – in fact, I was in there for around one and half hours. But being realistic about the situation, it’s probably not a good idea to swim in the river because you see loads of crocodiles around – although… did I stay in the fast water for most of the time and it was daylight - which helps because the crocs are less active during the day anyway!