Immortalized in the stories of Rudyard Kipling, huge dark shadows of a great fighter have lurked, in the deep wa-ters of the mighty rivers of the Indian subcontinent. The Mahseer, found only in In-dia, is the toughest fresh wa-ter fighting fish in the world. Weighing over a hundred pounds, four varieties inhabit the Indian river waters: the Golden Mahseer, the Silver Mahseer, the Silver Grey Mah-seer and the Black Mahseer. Today, in India, the sport of angling is combined with conservation. As per the ex-isting Indian protection laws, the fish is allowed to be caught, but must be released within a stipulated time pe-riod. The average time taken to land a Mahseer is in ratio to its weight--5 minutes to 5 lbs. With just enough time to record its weight, and pre-serve your moment of glory with the prize catch on film, before the fish is revived, you have to be really quick or else it could just end up as one of those fishy stories of, "the great one that got away." Trout fishing in the rivers and ice-fed mountain streams is a great sport. You may put your wits against the wily trout--both brown and rainbow--and catch the excitement of hooking a rainbow. Solitude seekers can spend hours in quiet contem-plation, of the beauty around. Few anglers in the West real-ize that India, with its doz-ens of rivers and thousands of streams, offers vast op-portunities for sportfishing and angling. Whether you're the type who likes to string a worm onto a makeshift line and catch your own dinner, or a thoroughbred professional angler with the latest in fish-ing tackle, India's waters both fresh and salt, can be a pleas-ant surprise. The country has an estimated 50,000 km of wa-ters - rivers, streams and lakes including an additional 3,000 km of coastline.The best time for Mahseer fishing in India is in Autumn from September to November as the rivers become clear af-ter the monsoon and in Spring from March to May when the early monsoon rain raises the level of the rivers again. The Himalayan rivers clear up by the end of September. The fast-flowing rivers that descent through spectacular mountain valleys in almost continual rapids offer not only tremendous sport fish-ing but also wonderful scen-ery and solitude for tourists. The best fishing tends to be in the less explored remote areas making the entire expe-rience a true adventure. Angling & Fishing in India