India part 2: Ramganga river

My next stop was the Ramganga river in the lesser Himalayas, just outside of Jim Corbett Tiger Reserve. I booked a trip through a flyfishing outfitter for nine days. Unfortunately the service was not what I paid for, and apparently the timing was off on the trip. The water was still to cold for the fish to be aggressively feeding. I had a few chances at some really nice fish, but could not connect with a big mahseer on the fly. Another angler in camp landed a 25 lb. plus fish the first evening's fishing, and then he struggled to land anything of size the rest of the trip as well.

There is a lot of wildlife around the park. It can be a little difficult to concentrate on the fishing when there are a few dozen monkeys on the opposite bank jumping from tree to tree and making apes of themselves. Pictured is a Langur.

There were definitely plenty of fish. The pool this picture came from held at least a hundred mahseer. Between another angler and I we caught two of them. Not good odds. Also note how clear the water was. It is at least four feet deep right here.

This one was caught on bait. Would have felt a lot better on my fly rod.

This was like the majority of the fish we caught. Small, but really pretty fish. With a five weight these would be great sport. Some days we couldn't even tempt the little guys. Statistically I don't think the little fish were any easier to hook than the bigger fish, but there were a lot more of them, and landing them was a whole lot easier.

This is a steel spike collar they attached to the dogs in camp to protect from tiger bites. These dogs were fearless and there were plenty of tigers around. The first night at camp we could hear a tiger growling in the dark right across the river. Definitely one of the highlights of my trip. Another morning we found wet pug marks in the ground on out walk upriver. The picture below shows a really big print that stretched about ten feet in between marks.