Flood-Pulse Variability and Climate Change Effects Increase Uncertainty in Fish Yields: Revisiting Narratives of Declining Fish Catches in India’s Ganga River

River-floodplains support a significant number of small-scale capture fisheries despite having undergone degradation due to human modification river flows by dams, pollution, and climate change. River fish production is underpinned the annual flood-pulse associated environmental changes that act as cues for spawning dispersal most species. However, studies on stock declines have focused more overfishing than hydroclimatic variability. Therefore, understanding how in variability influence fishing effort yields critical inform adaptive fisheries’ management. We investigated factors driving catch–effort dynamics India’s Ganga over two decades (2000–2020). compiled fishers’ narratives changing catches through semi-structured interviews compare them with our observed trends. Flood amplitude showed increasing variability, longer duration, earlier rise timings, linked La Niña El Niño phases. Catches per unit were correlated total yield but did not decline fishers thought, overall time. Hydroclimatic was driver local pressure. Rising uncertainty production, response altered Gangetic Plains, may be affecting behaviour underlying resource conflicts.