Chicken, ghee rice are now fish baits!

Looks like fried chicken and ghee rice are the favourite ‘dishes’ of freshwater fishes as well. The fishermen and anglers say that they use chicken fry and ghee rice as bait to catch freshwater fishes. Earlier the anglers attached earth worms or prawns as bait on fishing hooks to attract fish. A small fish called kaadan was also earlier used to catch chemballi (red snapper) which is one of the largest fishes found in lakes. However, these days, bits of fried chicken are used as the bait to catch chemballi.

The fishermen decided to resort to this new method when Narayanan, an angler caught a big chemballi from a rivulet at Padannaka, in Kasaragod district, recently. Fishermen say that a kind of fish called kachayi could be caught very easily by attaching ghee rice balls on fish hooks. Maalan or silver mullet which was caught using earthworms are now caught by attaching balls of all purpose flour (maida) on fishing rods.

The local fishermen thought about using meat as bait when they found that fishes devoured the leftover food from the houses on the banks after a wedding function, which was thrown into the lakes.

Meanwhile, fishermen say that fishes like cat fish and Malabar labeo (pullan) have disappeared from the inland water bodies which were very common during the monsoon season.