Mahseer

The New Year has arrived, already gone and I find myself preparing yet again for a mahseer trip to India. It’s trip number twenty-five, my records tell me, so I should be reasonably in control. But I’m not. All the usual panic over tablets, injections and visas beset me: no matter how long in advance I know about the trip, planning rationally seems totally beyond me.

What I do know is that I’ve been hugely fortunate to have forged this relationship with the subcontinent. Looking back, some of the very best times of my life have been spent out in India with some of the greatest fishing teachers imaginable. I’ve visited great places and seen, and even caught, some equally impressive fish. My first seventy pounder will always be dear to me – on a spinner, dragging me half a mile down through the rapids on its first run.  As is a hundred pounder or thereabouts that I hooked on dead bait and which nearly destroyed an uptide rod, trashed an Abu ten thousand and drained me literally of both blood and sweat. Believe me, there would have been tears, too, if that fish had escaped.

Yes, India’s been kinder to me than I’m sure I deserve but there’s still something it hasn’t given me, there’s still a nagging omission whenever I look back to what I have achieved there. I’ve never landed a big fish – over thirty pounds – on a fly. I’ve watched Dutch maestro, Leo Grosze Nipper, take mahseer to perhaps fifteen pounds or so on a nymph and eight / nine weight gear. Personally, I’ve lost fish to perhaps forty pounds on streamers and double-handed ten / eleven weight set ups. But to be honest, from the moment they’ve taken, I’ve known I’ve never really stood a chance. The fish are just too ferocious, the waters just too wild for salmon tackle.

2007 and this year I’m trying a different approach. I’ve laid my hand on the new Hardy saltwater fly fishing combo – the Zane. Named, obviously, after Zane Grey. I’m taking with me a nine-foot, ten-weight rod and an accompanying reel. This is an outfit designed for tarpon so it’s got to give me perhaps my best chance yet.

I’ll also adopt a slightly different fighting strategy as well. You’ve simply got to fly fish for mahseer in the white water because this is where the flies really work and where the fish are waiting for small prey. I’ll actually be casting from the bank – no chance of wading in water like this – but I’ll have a coracle and a guide waiting and as soon as there’s a hook up I’ll be afloat, prepared to follow the fish down to the next big pool where it can be fought sensibly.

Of course, there are all sorts of angling risks in pursuing a forty or fifty pound fish (or even larger) through volcanic water peppered with rocks the size of a Cadillac. It’s physically dangerous, too. If a coracle catches a rock and flips it’s not any laughing matter in water that would be classed four or five by a kayaker. God willing and I’ll report back.

But as all travellers know a good trip isn’t always about the fish. In fact, it rarely is. What I’m really looking forward to is meeting my guides who have become friends over the decades. There’ll be other, Indian anglers around too, many of whom have fished with me for years. These are wonderful friendships that I cherish deeply. The wildlife is magnificent. So, too, are the dawns and the sunsets especially. And I adore that heat, those milky-warm nights and air that feels like velvet on your skin.

I do so hope that you’ve had a peaceful Christmas and New Year. It’s an important time to recharge batteries, to prepare for the hammering that we know life will be dishing up.

Me, I’ve been working a few hours each day on a book that’s hideously late and I’ve got just a few questions for the angling historians out there…any ideas, any of you, about the life of Lord Desborough who loomed large on the Thames Fisheries Board in the early years of the twentieth century? And how about a certain Mr. Mitchell who was central in transporting brown trout into Kashmir one and a quarter centuries ago? Does anybody know anything about trout fishing today in Kashmir – especially on my favourite rivers, the Lidder and the Bringhi? And can anybody tell me about the status of trout fishing today in the less well-known areas of Africa. Believe me, any help, any advice, any pointers even will be gratefully received.

Keeping my fingers crossed, I’ll be reporting back in Week 3.