File picture of fishermen with their hilsa catch

Agartala, July 5: The prized Gomati hilsa is back to delight the palate of fish lovers in Tripura.

Hordes of people are flocking to Melaghar and Udaipur in West Tripura district to catch a sight of the fresh silvery harvest of the river waters.

After a gap of seven years, the Gomati is currently yielding the hilsa fish, a delicacy for most Bengali households. The Gomati is Tripura?s longest river which flows westward into the much larger Meghna of Bangladesh, after originating in the Kalajhari hill ranges of South Tripura.

There was a time till the mid-Nineties when shoals of hilsa would reach up to the Gomati from the Meghna for laying eggs during the monsoon. They would also move further upwards, into the Brahmaputra or Barak of Assam. Later, they would return to the bigger river and on to the Bay of Bengal.

This delicious variety of hilsa would invariably appear on dining tables in the state?s Bengali and urban tribal households. Some would even be taken away to Calcutta and also Assam during the monsoon.

The hilsas had stopped moving up the Gomati after 1997. ?This was because of the loss in navigability and depth of water in the Gomati,? explained Mrinal Kanti Dutta, a professor of Lembucherra Fisheries College. He added that heavy pre-monsoon showers this year have encouraged shoals of hilsas to revisit their old abode in Gomati.

Official sources in the fisheries department at Melaghar in West Tripura said over the past fortnight, at least 100 such fishes, weighing between 500 grams and 800 grams, have been caught everyday by fishermen from the Gomati, which flows through Sonamura subdivision. The catch is likely to rise as more fishermen get into the act.

?They are being sold now in the Melaghar and Udaipur markets between Rs 150 and Rs 180 per kg as all the fish is very fresh,? a source said.

The find could give the Padma hilsa from Bangladesh a run for its money. About a tonne of this famed variety comes to Agartala everyday.