The destruction of F.J. Mitchell’s wealth put in motion a series of events that led to him introducing brown trout into the streams of the Himalayas. In the early years of the twentieth century, Mitchell was perhaps the first to call Kashmir “an angler’s paradise.”
LINK (via: The Wire)
All very much past tense, now, I’m afraid – both Kashmir and the upper Beas tributaries in Kulu-Manali. I had the very good fortune to spend most of a trout season (May to Sept) in Kashmir in 1980. I caught a lot of brown trout, not of a very high average size and up to 4.5 pounds (an Indian fisher friend of mine did have a mindboggling 9-pounder though, probably the largest Kashmir brown since the days of Mitchell when the recently stocked streams produced fish to 14 pounds – but not for long; this was and is no New Zealand). The fishing, though “goodish” in places / on a few streams, was never great – just a lot of fun and done in the most incredibly beautiful mountain country. The Kashmiri people of the riverside villages were very friendly and hospitable too. Nine years later, in 1989, I was asked by a British TV company to take a film crew to Kashmir and film it, its people and its trout-fishing. Great fun was had by all, but the fishing had got a lot poorer in the years I had been away. The film is to be found on YouTube here – https://youtu.be/M-e8aXxbOdE
Nice little film that I haven’t looked at in 20-odd years, but sadly what it very captured prettily then is now very much past tense. As I occasionally say to fishing friends, “Just glad I did what I did when I did it!”.