Name: Indian Mahseer
Species: Neolissochilus
Thai name: Pla Wien
Biggest known fish: 24lb 8oz.
Lake rod caught record: 24lb 8oz
Average weight: 6lbs
Diet: Small Pellets, Fish, Shrimp, Snails & Worms.
To fish for our Indian Mahseer, we recommend exactly the same approach as for our Thai Mahseer, you carefully select your intended swim, they like to keep close to the margin shelf and work there way along close to the hyacinths. Feed small baits like maize, small pellet, stick pellet and if you are staying a few days feed the swim up over two or three days. Fish a light lead or float with your bait scattered around, plastic maize or pellet seems to pick these up more frequently, but a close second is fruit flavoured pop-ups or more natural baits such as worm or snails. For even better results try moulding some sticky rice around your hook link, and then pulling your hair rigged pop-up into the rice ball. This method makes a deadly combination of a pop-up sitting over a small patch of rice.
As with all the non-predatory fish in our lake, you need to create your own feeding area, and the tighter your feeding pattern the more fish you will concentrate in one area. The Mahseer is a bottom feeder, which has an under slung mouth with protruding lips, very similar to the European barbel. They rummage around the lakebed searching for food, and a giveaway to location in still conditions is look for pinprick clouds of bubbles breaking the surface. They are a shoal fish so once you have a shoal feeding keep the feed going in to hold them in your fishing area. They are very easily spooked, so when one is hooked let them run out of your baited area before playing them in. They are a very hard fighting fish for their size, and often fool you into thinking they are bigger than they are when they go on long, hard runs.
Be prepared for some unusual antics from these hardy fish; they sometimes jump when hooked, and even when you think the fight is over be prepared for them to jump from the landing net. When targeting these fish may also catch Siamese carp, Pacu, Tambaqui, plus all our other smaller carp species. A lot of our anglers use one rod with plastic maize on their baited area, and then fish with a fish bait on the outside edge of the baited area for predators who have come into the food zone attracted by the small bait fish feeding on the groundbait.
