Trout, Mouth-watering Delicacy

By K S Shankar

Did you know that the mouth-watering trout fish was introduced in India by the British colonialists, who felt homesick without their favorite species of fish? A determined group of Britons decided to bring it to Indian stream, come what may and after many unsuccessful attempts, losing both energy and money, the mission proved a success. But when the Sun set on the Empire, the trout too saw bad days, and today it is a rarity in Indian waters. This is truly an incredible saga put together by journalist-author Herjinder who stumbled on an unknown aspect of the Raj while writing on the trout.

Many Europeans in India pined for salmon and trout in the 19th and 20th centuries. Most were British in the East India Company and its army. Some Christian missionaries too shared the hunger for trout. The British realized they could ride horses, play outdoor or indoor games and could go angling in streams and rivers. But they lacked the magnificent trout.

One cannot miss the many signboards that offer a scrumptious meal of fresh trout, the moment one enters the Kullu Valley of Himachal Pradesh. And if you do choose to tuck into one, there’s a handful of enterprising Brits that need to be thanked for their efforts from over a century ago. Naturalized now, the trout isn’t indigenous to Indian rivers, and in his book Herjinder narrates the story of how the fish made its way from distant shores to eventually land up on your plate today.

Dr Francis Day, an assistant surgeon with the British Army, made the first serious attempt to import trout eggs into India. He wanted to stock them in the Nilgiri stream in southern India. The biggest problem was the distance from England. Post-independence, stocking of rivers with trout was reduced. There were several reasons: The building of dams, the development of infrastructure along the banks of rivers and environmental degradation further disturbed the life cycle of the trout.

Today, a handful of angling sites across India that offer real game. The brown trout has practically disappeared from rivers. Rainbow trout usually make it to dinner plates, thanks to the lucrative business of farming. But the department of fisheries in Himachal Pradesh has successfully reared high value “trout” in warm water in Gobind Sagar reservoir and Kol dam reservoir of Bilaspur district.

For the first time, about 500 fingerlings of Rainbow trout, a Coldwater fish from the Dhamwari trout farm in Rohru subdivision of Shimla district, were stocked in high-density polyethylene (HDPE) nets at Gobind Sagar reservoir in 2019 on an experimental basis. The results of this experiment were encouraging as the fish gained a body weight of almost one kg in just eight months, which usually takes two years or more in Coldwater regions, thus showing accelerated growth. Trout farming was introduced in Patlikul of Kullu District with Norwegian assistance way back in 1991. The State government has now imported more exotic varieties of trout fish named Arctic Char from Canada to promote extensive trout farming in the state.

Trout fish requires chill water, which is available in the upper reaches of Himachal Pradesh, some parts of Uttarakhand and many places in Jammu and Kashmir at heights of more than 10,000 feet above sea level. The Himachal Fisheries Department is depending on more private investment in trout cultivating, while a few trout ranchers are closing shops and selling their homesteads. The trout ranchers of the North Indian state are subject to the state’s Fisheries Department for the fundamental parts of seed – incubated trout – and feed, required for cultivating trout. With the public authority itself selling produce close to ranchers, a hefty dependence on the division for fundamental creation segments, and the quality and supply of these parts not being adequate, numerous ranchers feel the matter of trout cultivating is dangerous.

But now this Himalayan trout could lose its habitat by 16 per cent in the next 30 years, a new climate change study by the government’s Wildlife Institute of India has found. The study indicates that most of the lower altitude streams across the Himalayas would be rendered unsuitable for the existence of snow trout with the rise in temperatures.

Source: Himalayan News Chronicle