Species Mahseer

Knowing more about an obsession helps us come to terms with it better. And what better an object of obsession than the golden mahseer? It reaches a gratifyingly large size, puts up a great fight and if it's obese cousin the carp can be called beautiful by some, the words for a mahseer's beauty are yet to be written.

'Mahseer' is the common name for several species of large scaled barbels (one of them not of the same genus) found in the subcontinent. The Barbus tor putitora is a coldwater cyprinid related to the European barbel (Barbus barbus) and carp (Cyprinus carpio carpio). Once found all along the Himalayan foothill rivers from West of Afghanistan to parts of South-East Asia, now the great mahseers are found only along the Indian Himalayas. It's South-Eastern cousin does not attain a size to be called 'great'.

As Thomas says - 'There be more than one Richmond in the field'. There are seven of them.
We consider the valid species to be:
Tor putitora- the Yellow-fin or Golden Mahseer
Tor tor- the Redfin Mahseer
Tor mosal- the Copper Mahseer
Neolissocheilus hexagonolepis- the Chocolate Mahseer
Tor progenius- the Jungha Mahseer
Tor mussullah- the Humpback Mahseer
Tor khudree- the Yellow or Deccan Mahseer

All except the last two are found in the Himalayan fisheries, former two being the bigger and more widespread, the latter three being commoner in the East Himalayas (Assam, Sikkim, Arunachal).
T. Mussullah and T. Khudree are found in Peninsular India of which the former runs big - a fish of this species constitutes the April 1947 record of 120 lbs. Our own waters up North have been producing 50kg plus fish but unfortunately, the best way to see these is in fish markets, produced by poachers.

The T. putitora is a totally different beast from the other versions. Elusive, finicky, moody and arguably the most beautiful fish in India, the Yellow-fin lives in big, fast water, grows bigger and takes with unmatched aggression when it does. It's fight in Himalayan waters is aided by the biggest fins and some of the biggest rivers. Most Yellow-fins tend to run downriver rather than up making good running shoes a necessity. It's possible to hook a record size Mahseer in some of the waters, but landing them is a story we'd like you to write.

In a somewhat perverse manner, if one looks purely at bags and tackle, the fishing doen't seem to have changed much really. Old time anglers used to moan about lack of fish or fishing being tough. If not that then '...several much larger ones got off...'. Well, the story is more or less the same. The biggest have been killed off and those that remain fall in the same size category. Whatever the cause, we still know places for fish worth writing home about. Just make sure you don't leave good luck behind.