INDIANANGLER

Hi Aaron,
Mount the hook just below the dorsal fin (in line with the first ray of the dorsal fin)
Regards
Owen

Stay above the lateral line. if you go below you will puncture organs or break the backbone and the chilwa will die real fast.

Another thing is to snip off the tail fin. This makes the chilwa swim real crazy and attracts more fish.

I agree with MKen ... ... another thing that I do is take the 3 sets of trebles off the plug and instead use only 2 but larger trebles .. for eg if the plug has 2/0 trebles x 3 .. i take them off and then put on 3/0 or 4/0 depending on the length of the plug . what this does that it puts the plug of keel with the first treble skipping from side to side of the plug thereby making the plug swim erratically instead of the straight line that it normally would .. The only drawback is that it works great on the troll but instead of putting out 3 to 4 rods .. you may have to put out only 2 as the lines may get entangled . The second drawback is that since the hooks are large you cannot spin with those plugs as 2 out of 3 times the main treble gets entangled either with the snalp or the swivel and thats a pain .. but if your only trolling ... i would advise all to change the hooks from 3 to 2 on the plug and depending on the size of the plug use either 3/0 or 4/0 ... as the strike rate goes much higher when I do this

OB,
how big do these baitfish have to be?

3 to 6 inch chilwa are ideal.

Hey guys, I think Steve has a valuble contribution to make to this thread. His experiments with mangos sound.........interesting

I caught fish on Monster Crab boilie mix and wild mangos.

Also caught on pellets, but think they will eat anything that lands on the water and makes a splash. I suspect they often hit a spinner because of the splash, not because they think it's a fish!

Hi,
I have used plain atta but maybe only about 5-10 times in my lifetime.The atta should not be hard or boiled as we do for flowing water, but soft for typical to the Mahseer she will take it in one big rush and thus hard atta comes out of the mouth most of the time.Try and keep a very little bit of hook exposed.We are talking of ledgering. For flowing water the best is indian chapati made a little thick and cut in pieces about the size of a medium sized button and put about 15 of them on the hook . Use very light and strong hooks like Gamakatsu octopus hooks sz 3/0. Throw in ur baited pair of hooks and a good hit is going to be there.This bait can be left for long -especially suited to fast flowing water .
Using live bait - try using dollies (Very similar to Murrels) hook them at the dorsal fin -BE VERY SURE U TAKE THE DOLLIES OUT OF THE SAME SOURCE OF WATER AND JUST THEN . THE MAHSEER WILL HIT AND HIT HARD. BE SURE TO HANDLE THE FISH WITH BARE HANDS AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE -Ur SMELL IS CARRIED. We used murrels from a local pond and the Mahseer hit us at Ropar like mad and in Ropar we generally never got a bite those days. Hope all this will help ! CHEERS

most of the time i use cheese and "bundiya" ...... these r really popular baits to catch smaller mahseers in testa river.....even reddish part of lung of mutton is also pretty effective.......