Qualitative analysis of Cyprinidae fisheries of Govindgarh reservoir of Madhya Pradesh

Abstract

Although ichthyofaunas of a reservoir basically represent the fauna of the parent river system, fish species diversity usually suffers a setback on impoundment. Indian reservoirs, however, preserve a relatively rich variety of fish species. Indian major carps occupy a prominent place among the commercially important fishes. More recently, numbers of exotic species have contributed substantially to commercial fisheries. However, the information of fish diversity of Govindgarh reservoir of Madhya Pradehs is scarce, and as the Cyprinidae family consists of the very important commercial fishes of the reservoirs of India. This paper focus on the qualitative analysis of Cyprinidae fisheries of Govindgarh reservoir of Madhya Pradesh and represents the data as recorded during the study period so that readily available fisheries data should be made available for further research and improvement of the reservoir. For this, sampling were done early in the morning on fortnight basis by local fishing methods and examined for color pattern and preserved in 5-10% formaldehyde solution for further study in the lab. The fish catch statistics of Govindgarh reservoir during the study period revealed sharp fluctuations in yield rates, and varied from 0.4 to 26.4 kg ha-1 at an average of 15.92kg ha-1. Indian major carps, Catla catla, Labeo rohita, Cirrhinus mrigala constitute 80% of the catch during the study period. Carps, especially catla, register impressive growth, specimens weighing 13 kg being a very common size in the reservoir. Average sizes of rohu and mrigal in the catch are 3.5 and 5.5 kg respectively. There were 14 species of 14 genus from the Cyprinidae were recorded during the study period, which were dominant of the total catch per effort.