Pump house blues

[eljefe]

Its like this people, a pic is worth a 1000 words.To save you the bother of reading a 1000 words, waited for my pal Ken to post the pics, and then I decided to do a post here…
Sun 4 -30am pick up the karate kid aka Dev, head to Gurgaon, miss a couple of exits and find ourselves on the modern hell called Gurgaon -Jaipur highway intead of the RV point where we’re supposed to meet Ken.
We find each other a few calls later , within 10min of the agreed upon time and off to the pumphouse, close to Jhajjar.
“The doc has decided to make a (pump)house call” intones Ken
A decent drive later, we’re at the pumphouse, the flow has been shut off from Dadupur, water is low, pumps are quiet and fish are jumping around.
Sweet, sour and chicken liver baits hooked up, 3 min later, I have a major hookset, then nothing.tug and pull, and Dev chips in, trying to hand line and free –all the katas and karate must have helped –he snaps 25lb line and hands it to me with not even a shrug!
More movement, we see Singhada cruising, and then Ken gets a bite, hookset, hauls out a 1.5kg Mulley. My first look at the Wallagonia Attu.
Heat builds up-the Tang flows, flies swarm because of the raw liver and plenty of bites!
I do a little bit of R&D on the new ‘bathroom’ made plugs-Surprised to see them performing great, a school of minnows follow them and I am able to ‘stir the pot’ and get all kinds of movements/jerks/retrieves. Ken swears that this spoon will murder the mahseer at Bhakra and Pong.
SMS from Mack The Knife- “hows the fishing?”
He gets a short report.
I have my new Shimano baitrunner on and few min later , hear a steady click click of the bait runner –Ken is the closest, jumps to the rod-I’m a distance away-haul in, hookset, no luck-Hook comes away with shreds of fibrous flesh.
A while later, another hookset on Ken’s side, he hauls out a 18” dia terrapin.
Field surgery is attempted to unhook-terrapin withdraws into shell, finally force out the head and retract jaws with a plastic hook remover,NO luck with the pliers, -Its decided to cut out as much of the hook and toss him back.Surgery done, terrapin rights itself and lights afterburners-damn, that was one fast mover…Dev too involved in the procedure to take snaps-never mind, we’ll hook another at this rate.
12-30pm, blazing hot-even the local audience has long disappeared. We decide to pack up-a lone straggler from the original audience remains-We decide to enrich the protein intake of the local populace and gift him the ‘mulley’
Get back to Ken’s place, then switch to my non a/c amby, 2 traffic jams and 2 litres of water later, I’m back home 12 hrs later.
Best
Axx
PS-gotta remember to wash the rods and equipment-we’ve used tones of chicken liver…

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/1898/dsc00039le0.jpg

[Risala]

Asif,
Am still trying to figure out whether you had fun,
the bright side is that you did catch a couple even in this heat.
Pumphouse I gather is close to Jajjar,but where is this place Dadupur.
Do let me know next time when you head out,would like to join you folks,
still need to get the rod wet.
Rusty will Pm the details that I was meant to shortly.
cheers
Sanjay

[Mack The Knife]

Thanks for the write-up, Asif.

That looks like an interesting little swim.

Pran, Inder and I are heading out to Manchanbele tomorrow. Unfortunately, it will have to be a 9:30 a.m. start and we have to leave for Bangalore at 2 p.m.. Still, it's better than sitting on one's duff doing nothing.

Mack The Knife

[Pran]

Good one doc.

Pran

[mehulkamdar]

Asif,

Very nice write up.

Speaking of terrapins, my wife and I found a Painted Turtle in a parking lot after some kinds released him there as he was not wanted at home. So we brought him here and he now lives in a little fish tank, proud and beautiful. Mark has been guiding us on caring for him and he has been with us for about 6 or 7 months now.

As some Indians consider turtles inauspicious, I was asked by one gentleman (who has the habit of irritating everyone on earth whom he meets with his silly superstitions) why I wanted such an inauspicious creature in my house. I told him that I was planning to teach my little turtle the theory of relativity in order to shut him up. The little turtle then got named Albert quite promptly, short, of course, for ALbert Einstein, the latter half of the great scientist's name left out as many refer to my dog with it.

Cheers!

[mundaire]

Nice write up Aisf, sounds like you guys had fun. Nice to see Dev & your persistence (in locating a decent fishing hole close to Delhi) finally pay off!

BTW, were you fishing in that pump house pond seen in the picture? Or was it one of the canals close by?

Cheers!
Abhijeet

[dev]

need to pipe in that it was mainly the good doc whose enthusiasm always rubs off. he made 43*c weather seem like a picnic with his non stop casting and experimenting, his home made rigs and then showing us how a frog is used and the amazing bait runners. since I know very little about fishing he and ken answered my silly ones like.... can we use a net now... the heat was amazing, gawd the water we were drinking had boiled over and we just needed to use the doc's instant coffee packs or we coulda just added some eggs and they would have been boiled. god bless these two crazy guys and their awesome determination to not sleep in on a sunday .

dev

[Grumpy]

Asifs twelve bar.

Woke up this morning
took myself down to that old river
Woke up this morning
took myself down to that old river.
Remembered that I had to
take my bait of chopped-up chicken liver.

Caught no fish
but hoped and prayed it would not rain.
Caught no fish
and hoped and prayed it would not rain.
Couldn`t get a bite which is
why I got them pump house blues again.

[Sakobav]

great effort Asif and nice blues Grumpy, although with Mercury rising these guys were probably hoping for some rain or cloud cover.

btw this is where I am headed soon but I dont have a salt water fishing rod any advise if I need one or a brand

http://www.nycfishing.com/eastriver.html

Its strictly catch and release courtesy the cartoon on second page -- due to pollution

Cheers

[snIPer]

Mack The Knife - Any luck with your fishing?

[dev]

Wow grumpy I can almost hear it . Its nice and cloudy today I wish we could have gone today.

Dev

Asifs twelve bar.

Woke up this morning
took myself down to that old river
Woke up this morning
took myself down to that old river.
Remembered that I had to
take my bait of chopped-up chicken liver.

Caught no fish
but hoped and prayed it would not rain.
Caught no fish
and hoped and prayed it would not rain.
Couldn`t get a bite which is
why I got them pump house blues again.

[eljefe]

'Got them fishing blues, for now and for life ':refrain

Navi, dont know what outfit you have now, better a plain jane vanilla than some Gucci outfit! suggest you ask steve on that webpage?
That animated knots is one very informative section.

Thanks Grumps, Bravo actually.yes, we did have fun
best
Axx

[eljefe]

Abhijeet,
that pumphouse pond is like a T- the pumps are located in the horizontal part and the upstream canal is the vertical bar.We were at the junction-thats where all the fishy activity was.
Next time, will explore the vertical arm...
Saw the Ganga today at this bridge Ghat -garmukteshwar? major crowd because of the festival, but seems like there's chance of finding decent action a bit upstream from the bridge, about 60km from here.

[mundaire]

Saw the Ganga today at this bridge Ghat -garmukteshwar? major crowd because of the festival, but seems like there's chance of finding decent action a bit upstream from the bridge, about 60km from here.

My village is just a few KM from that place (towards Delhi), lots of migratory birds fly in during the winters, so a pair of good binoculars for bird watching would be recommended kit during those months. This was in fact the potential fishing spot I was talking about, when Rusty was here in December.

Due to the "Ghats" around the bridge, there are lots of boatmen available for hire, so I guess one could potentially rent out a boat for the day and have the chap row it to a good spot. This stretch of the Ganga has no big towns upstream either, so the water is not as polluted as it gets as one goes further down...

Cheers!
Abhijeet

[eljefe]

here's a pic of the pumphouse, to answer your question:

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/5673/dsc00041ow9.jpg

Is it somewhere near kuchesar? saw that board and turn off a few km down the road.
Okaay- I wonder how butter drizzled chappaties and cooold milk tastes like in summer....
Tried the malla thing last sep in the Ganga near Rae bareilly, one tiddler after hours of trolling-atleast the family knows that the fishing stuff is for real and let me cause havoc in the loo based engineering works...