82 ENGLISH LAKE DISTRICT FISHERIES 



Clarke (1787) in his Survey of the Lakes > writes 

 as follows of Windermere : 



" The fishing in this lake is a freehold belonging to several 

 men, which together pay a quit rent of six pounds to the 

 lord of the manor, but it is not very valuable ; for the pike, 

 the most voracious of all freshwater fish, is in plenty here 

 the whole year, and destroys the other fish. Here also are 

 trouts, eels, perch, and char ; the trouts are scarce and bad, 

 though some are pretty large ; they are, however, ill-fed, 

 owing, as I suppose, to not venturing to seek food for fear of 

 their natural enemy, the pike. On the 28th of October, 1784, 

 I was upon the shore about Cunza, when I observed a boat 

 coming towards me, and near the same time perceived it 

 stop and the men in it take something out of the water ; on 

 their coming ashore, they told me that in coming they saw 

 two large trouts floating upon the surface of the lake with 

 their bellies uppermost, close alongside each other, and 

 seemingly dead. On laying hold of one of them they seemed 

 to be entangled, but in lifting it out of the water the other 

 made its escape ; they then discovered that they had seized 

 between them a small trout, and each seemed determined to 

 lose its life rather than its prey ; they had struggled till life 

 was almost spent, and both might have been easily taken if 

 the fishermen had believed either to be alive ; the lesser, 

 which they took, weighed about a pound and a half, but was 

 very ill-fed ; the other they supposed to weigh above two 

 pounds, their being obliged to prey upon their own species 

 is a proof of the great scarcity of their proper food. 



" The char in this lake are of excellent quality for potting, 

 many pots of which are sent to different parts of the Kingdom 

 every year; I do not, however, think them superior in 

 quality to the Ulswater char, and are distinguishable from 

 them more by their colour than taste, so much alike, indeed, 

 are they that many pots of Ulswater trout are sold for 

 Winandermere char. They are taken in this lake in per- 

 fection only from the beginning of September to the middle 

 of February, during which time they assemble themselves in 

 what is here called Schools, like herring ; sometimes near 

 the shore, sometimes near the middle of the lake; when 

 thus assembled (if observed by the fishermen who watch at 

 these seasons), they surround them with nets and take them 



