70 ENGLISH LAKE DISTRICT FISHERIES 



Fortunately (or unfortunately?) perch exist in 

 millions, and pike in thousands ; and their very 

 abundance goes far to injure the fish-producing 

 capacity of the lake. If their numbers were greatly 

 reduced, as many fish would be actually taken as 

 now, only they would give much better sport, and 

 the size would be greatly increased. Nothing 

 which anglers with rod and line can do can make 

 any appreciable difference upon the quantity of 

 fish in the lake ; and it is a question for the 

 authorities whether systematic netting for coarse 

 fish ought not to be allowed over a series of years, 

 with arrangements for carefully watching the re- 

 sults. In this connection it ought to be borne in 

 mind that a perch produces 50,000 eggs for every 

 pound of its live-weight, and a pike 18,000 eggs. 

 A large number of these, of course, are destroyed ; 

 but these figures suggest the possible increase of 

 the species under favourable conditions such as 

 exist in Windermere. 



And here I may set down what I believe to be 

 an important fact in connection with trout-fishing 

 on Windermere, which, if it has ever been recorded, 

 has not been given the attention it requires. The 

 question has been put a thousand times : Why 

 cannot Windermere be converted into a Loch 

 Leven ? or, in other words, why cannot it be made 

 to swarm with trout, and so become an angler's 

 paradise. The answer lies in the physical con- 

 figuration of the lake. Windermere, as already 

 stated, has a maximum depth of 219 feet, a mean 

 depth of 78J feet ; and until the lake bottom can 

 be raised so as to give a greater area of shallow 

 water conditions, so long will the quantity of its 

 trout and trout-fishing be limited. 



