It’s been a while since I have been fishing what with lockdowns , covid twice (mild, fully vaccinated and boostered), work, travel abroad, etc.
However, I finally made it up to my lake for a genuine session. The lake is ‘v’ shaped with one arm running East West and the other not quite North South.
East West
I fished where the two arms meet and soon had my usual 13 foot float rod (Hardy Marksman 13ft. Specimen), A fly reel (Daiwa Lochmor) loaded with 12lb fluorocarbon (Berkeley), with a homemade peacock quill waggler for the float ending in a great big No. 2 Owner bait hook attached via a two inch braid link. A single AB shot was pinched on where braid met fluorocarbon. The depth was adjusted to leave 3 inches of quill showing with the shot on the bottom. Bait was a great blob of paste to cover the hook made of fish pellets ground to powder mixed with coarse wheat flour and wetted with water. I fished as usual a couple of feet from the rod tip. A handful of pellets were thrown in over the float as groundbait.
Fishing a peacock quill waggler just past the rod tip, facing South.
It was cold (for these parts: 11ºC) with a chill northerly breeze blowing but the fish were on the bite and I was soon in business.
Fish pulling my string
Catla (Catla catla) 5.2 kg. Mandan, who looks after the lake to my left and Ram, his brother, holding the fish.
Rohu (Labeo rohita) 5kg.
I started fishing as the sun was setting and fished on in to the night while Ram regaled me with a graphic account of how an enormous wild boar, with tushes more akin to the tusks of an elephant, had given him the “what for” earlier that afternoon in the “Backs” of the tea estate. He told me he had unceremoniously legged it the moment he saw it. On my enquiring how he was sure the tushes were that big he said the boar had “popped“ them at him and they had to be big to make that much noise. The “popping“sound is made by a boar by clicking his upper and lower tushes together in a downright nasty manner and is a definite indication to keep your distance.
We fished into the night and landed many fish of a wide variety including Mahseer (Tor putitora), Mrigal (Cirhinnus mrigala), Common carp, and a hapless “nuisance” Tilapia (Oreochromis nilotica) of about a kg, which I have to admit has ended up in the frying pan. The rest of the fish started at about 2.5 kg. The two above were the best weighed.
All the best
Lakhyaman
