A hilsa weighing 2kg 280g has been caught in a fisherman's net in Kalapara, Patuakhali. It was later sold for Tk 6,840.

The hilsa was caught by a fisherman named Alamas Majhi at Hairer Char, next to Char Bijoy in the Bay of Bengal. When he brought it to Kuakata's Mayor Bazar on Tuesday morning (8 October), it was bought by a trader named Hasan.

Alamas Majhi said he took the hilsa to the Moni Fish wholesale depot at Kuakata Mayor Bazar, where it was sold at auction for the highest bid of Tk 6,840.

He said little hilsa is being found in the sea, although fishermen are catching some big hilsa now and then. But no one else in the area has caught such a big fish this year, he said.

Md Hasan, director of Fish Valley, the firm that bought the fish at auction, said: "We don't usually get such a big hilsa at this market. We hope to sell it at a good price if we send it to Dhaka."

Kalapara Upazila Senior Fisheries Officer Apu Saha said big hilsa bring good news for fishermen. Coastal fishermen as well as those in the deep sea are now often catching big hilsa, which he said could be called a benefit of the government's two hilsa fishing bans a year.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.