The sun had barely peeped over the horizon and a red glow was spreading across the countryside. With cast nets on their shoulders and fish baskets in hand, people began gathering on the riverbank. Some cast from the bank, others waded in waist-deep. As the morning wore on the crowd grew until it turned into a festival, with a shout going up every time someone landed a big fish.

This was the scene early on Monday at the Burir Bandh sluice gate on the Suk river in Thakurgaon Sadar upazila.

Every year at this point in the Bengali month of Kartik the sluice gate is opened. Local people step into the water held back by the barrage, joined by others from nearby towns and villages, and it becomes a fishing festival that lasts three or four days and turns the area into a gathering place. This year, however, many were disappointed not to find the fish they had hoped for.

Local people said construction of the Burir Bandh sluice gate on the Suk began in 1975-76 to give irrigation to farmland in the dry season, and was completed in 1982. Each year the fisheries department releases fry of various species into the water held behind it, and the union parishad concerned makes sure nobody catches them. Then on the first or second day of Kartik the water is released and the fish are opened to everyone. The festival has been held ever since the sluice gate was built.

At dawn on Monday people of all ages were crowded shoulder to shoulder casting nets, sometimes landing one net on top of another. Now and then a couple of small puti-type fish came up, but most of the time the nets were empty. Friends and relatives stood on the embankment cheering them on.

A group of eight had come from Kumarpara in Boda upazila of Panchagarh. Resting at midday, Md Khokon said: "Two or three years ago I used to catch and sell Tk 4,000-5,000 worth of fish a day. Today I haven't even got two kilograms."

Ashok Roy, 50, a farmer from Chilarang, said: "We come to fish in the barrage water every year and used to get 10 kg a day on average. This year there are hardly any fish. What fish there are, local people have fenced off with nets, so they cannot get out."

Ismail Hossain, 45, from Bokserhat, said: "We come here in a group every year for the love of it. We are not getting fish the way we did last year. All year round local people kill the small fry and brood fish in the barrage with current nets and ring nets. That is why fish are scarce, and people are going home disappointed."

Samiruddin, 39, from Akhanagar, had caught a few puti and two shol (snakehead). He had not caught much by midday, but he was happy to spend the day in high spirits. When hunger caught up with them, the group sat down to rice, vegetables and greens from their food bundles. A man nearby pointed at the fish in his basket and asked, "When will you eat these fish?" Samiruddin replied, "As many as I've caught."

Samiul Haque, 34, had come with a group of seven friends from different areas. He cast five times without a single fish; on the sixth he caught one puti, to the group's great delight. "Fish or no fish, we'll be out here with our nets every day," he said. Standing beside him, a young man named Mahbub Alam, 33, said: "The catch hardly matters, the fun is what counts."

Subrata Kumar Barman, chairman of Akcha union parishad (UP) in Sadar upazila, said that when the barrage water is released at this time in Kartik, local people and those from around go fishing in groups. Fishing is not most of their livelihoods; they fish for the love of it in this season and enjoy it.

Source: Prothom Alo. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.