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  Courtesy: Misty Dhillon

  

  (From top) Fishing for the mahseer in the Himalayas is like a once-in-a-lifetime experience for anglers, and more Indians are going for it now, says Misty Dhillon; Bopanna Pattada, whose Indian Angleronline forum has brought the angling community into the open, reels in a golden mahseer near Corbett; Courtesy: Bopanna Pattada

It was a high seas adrenaline rush for Calcutta-based cardiologist and avid angler Saikat Barik. One moment he was standing on the deck of his boat off the Sri Lankan port of Kirinda waiting for a bite and the next he was engaged in a titanic struggle. On the other end of the line was a monster 50-kg Giant Trevally or GT game fish that was struggling to break free.

'I was casting the line 60m-80m away. Within minutes, I heard a loud boom and almost got pulled overboard. It was the fight of my life. I took 20 minutes to reel in that fish before quickly taking a picture and releasing it,' he recounts. Now, Barik, who loves to go deep-sea fishing, wants the scores of anglers who fish for the table on Calcutta's myriad water bodies to take up sports fishing.

Meanwhile, in Bangalore, Sree Subaya, who only began angling two years ago after meeting her husband Shayan, can barely go a weekend without heading out with her rod and reel. She loves to fish for the Indian carp like the catla, and she's even dreaming of starting an angling camp in future. 'I want to pursue angling as a long-term life goal,' she says.

From Chennai to Kashmir and from Mumbai to Sikkim, then, the bait has been prepared and the line, cast. And a growing tribe of anglers is getting reeled into the sport.

'Sports fishing is growing phenomenally across India,' says Ali H. Husaini, president, All India Game Fishing Association (AIGFA), who's been spearheading the efforts to promote the sport. From 19 members in 2010, the AIGFA has over 2,200 members today.

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  G. J. Santhosh (third from left) has been taking anglers deep-sea fishing in Chennai with his Blue Waters fishing charter service; Courtesy: G. J. Santhosh

The anglers are fishing for everything from barracuda and GT to the Indian mahseer, found in the Cauvery and Himalayan rivers, to the Indian carp. They're fishing in lakes, rivers, on the beach and in the sea. And they're even going on sports fishing expeditions.

So Misty Dhillon offers a luxe colonial-style experience, angling for the golden Himalayan mahseer on the Western Ramganga River near Corbett and down the Mahakali and Saryu rivers with his The Himalayan Outback. And in Chennai, sports fishing charters like Blue Waters and Barracuda Bay Fishing have come up in the last four years.

'People today want to stand out as individuals and a sport like fishing helps them get in touch with their hunter-gatherer genes. It excites us when we catch something. To handle a creature like the mahseer and, then, to let it go to conserve it offers the ideal mix between our ancestral behaviour and modern society,' says Dhillon, who's been taking international anglers mahseer fishing since 2004. Now, his domestic anglers have grown by 50 per cent since 2010. And he's started holding mahseer master classes for them too.

Of course, Indians have been angling for centuries, albeit they've mostly fished for the table using simple bamboo hand-lines and old-fashioned techniques. India has also been popular with international anglers, but now domestic anglers are taking to catch-and-release fishing as a sport. The tide began turning a while ago, but the pace has picked up in the last two years. It began as Indians gained exposure on travels abroad and as the Internet created a platform for anglers.

One early initiative was in 2006, when Bangalore's Bopanna Pattada set up Indian Angler, the first online Indian fishing forum. Pattada, a wildlife photographer and ornithologist, recalls angling with his father's battalion on the Cauvery as a child. 'As I grew older, I felt a need to connect with other anglers,' he says.

So he founded Indian Anglers, which has 4,300 members now. Immediately, it created a platform for Indian anglers to interact, opening up what till then was a secretive community. 'The anglers were always around, but the forum allowed them to connect with others,' he says.

The sport got another fillip when Husaini and other anglers founded AIGFA in 2010. 'Earlier, there was no structured concept of sports fishing,' says Husaini, who's even invented a special baiting device for catching carp.

Adds AIGFA's vice-president Santosh Kolwankar, who loves to fish for GTs along the Konkan coast: 'Indians want to learn fishing. When I started nine years ago, I couldn't get anyone to teach me even the basics like tying a fishing knot. That's changed now.'

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  Pic: Gajanan Dudhalkar

  
  

  Courtesy: Derek D'Souza

  

  (From top) Ali H. Husaini, who has turned Mumbai's Powai Lake into a haven for carp fishing, is spearheading the efforts to promote the sport through his All India Game Fishing Association; Derek D'Souza's angling camps for children are drawing fishing enthusiasts like nine-year-old Aaliyah Bist and her parents Anamika and Vishal; Sree Subaya, who began angling two years ago, loves to fish for Indian carp like the catla; Courtesy: Bopanna Pattada

The AIGFA's certainly promoting the sport. Last year, it held India's first salt water angling competition on Neil Island in the Andamans, which drew 30 participants. This June, it held the first freshwater angling competition in Mysore. And on World Fish Migration Day in May, it hosted children's angling camps in eight cities like Guwahati.

'We want to teach ethical angling,' says AIGFA co-founder Derek D'Souza, who grew up angling on a hand-line in Mangalore and only took up sport fishing after buying a rod-and-reel in the UK in 2003. Now, he holds angling camps. And his Angling Trip Report forum has 4,000 members.

Meanwhile, in Chennai, companies like Blue Waters and Barracuda Bay Sport Fishing are taking people deep-sea fishing for species like the GT, barracuda and marlin. Anglers typically use lures, or plastic fish, as bait and use techniques like trolling, jigging and popping.

'The response has been great, not just from expats, but from Indian too,' says Blue Waters' G. J. Santhosh, who discovered angling while studying in Australia. Blue Waters now does 25-30 trips a month against three-four in 2010.

Interior designer Manoj Chacko, who grew up fishing in Kerala, set up Barracuda Bay four years ago. 'I'd been fishing from the shore for 25 years but it became difficult after it was banned inside the Chennai harbour. So I started a sports fishing company,' he says. Deep-sea fishing is still a 'very nascent' market, he says, because of the poor infrastructure. Still, he's gets four-five enquiries a day now against one-two a week earlier.

Meanwhile, Prithvi Raj Manivelu, one of the earliest proponents of the sport — he started a fishing charter in 2005 before he co-founded Blue Waters — is about to move in an entirely different direction by launching three 'fishing ponds' for anglers in Chennai this month.

Manivelu wants to train anglers step by step. So he's built a tilapia fish pond for beginners, where they will start with a bamboo pole before graduating to rods and reels in the carp pond, and then to fishing with lures in the barramundi pond. 'We have to develop a strong base of anglers to grow the sport,' he says.

The new anglers are coming from all across India. They're using different techniques from spin fishing to fly fishing to deep-sea popping. Aeronautical engineering student Arun Kumar started angling after his friends took him on a fishing trip to Chennai 10 years ago. He never caught any fish then. But he was hooked. Now, he's opened an online store, fishingtackels.com. 'I have fished along the entire Chennai to Pondicherry stretch,' he says.

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  Saikat Barik, who loves to go deep-sea fishing, is promoting sports fishing in Calcutta; courtesy: Saikat Barik

Meanwhile, senior executive Cana Naidu — he has his own textile firm in Bangalore — took up sport fishing after going trolling in Sri Lanka in 2000. 'I find it therapeutic to be out on the sea,' says Naidu, who often charters a boat from Blue Waters.

Even children like nine-year-old Aaliyah Bist are getting interested through D'Souza's angling camps. Says her mo-ther Anamika: 'Since we love the outdoors, we bought a rod and reel. But we never caught anything. Then, we took Derek's camp, and it was a dream.' Now, they're taking a second camp in August. Says Aaliyah: 'I caught a rohu in May. My coach helped me because it was really heavy. Next time, I want to do it myself.'

D'Souza's trained 60 children in four camps since last year. And the response is only growing. 'Everybody wants an angling camp in their city now. The kids love the thrill of it, also because they're watching shows like River Monsters on TV,' says D'Souza, who's hosting a camp in Calcutta with Barik soon.

Meanwhile, Delhi-based Tegbir Singh Mann, who's been fishing for over 40 years, loves fly fishing for trout in Kashmir. He makes six-seven fishing trips a year. But he says: 'We have no concept of conservation. We used to have some of the best fishing but our bureaucrats are bent on killing the sport.'

Indeed, like it's done abroad, Indian anglers too want to use angling as a tool for conservation. 'We want to promote sports fishing to conserve our wetlands,' says AIGFA's Husaini, who recalls angling with his scientist father in the pristine wetlands near Lucknow with wild animals roaming nearby.

Manivelu even wants to introduce the international practice of 'rewilding' or buying mature fish from fish farm-cum-ponds like his and releasing them into the sea for propagation.

The anglers are also battling policy hurdles — sports fishing is banned in some places — as they promote the sport. Still they're determined to keep casting their lines. Husaini recalls the old adage: 'As they say, it's not the angler who hooks the fish, but the fish that hooks the angler.'