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we cannot even manage a fishing-pond, which we drain in order to take the 

 fish we wish, on better principles. 



But why then do we constantly speak of the destruction of our fishery, 

 what is the cause of the great decrease we can point out in the supplies of 

 good fish in our market, and of the growing dissatisfaction among the owners 

 of fishing-vessels? 



The answer is very simpel: because we — to use once more the picture 

 of the grass — because we cut the grass a little too short, we fish the plaice 

 3, (3, nay perhaps 12 months too early, before they have reached any con- 

 siderable selling price. — 



When a man drains his carp-pond and takes all the carps, then the 

 pond is empty; but nevertheless nobody will here speak of a destruction, if 

 only the man takes care of two things: 



1) to get the carps well paid, 



2) to place young fish in the pond again. 



In order to get a good price for the carps, they must be of a certain size 

 and in good condition; this, however, is easily managed by the carp-breeder, 

 as all the fish in such a pond generally are of the same age and therefore of about 

 the same size. With the plaice it is somewhat different; they are fished in many 

 sizes and generally not sorted by the fisherman in this way. Since the new 

 law has come into force the quite small ones, certainty, are sorted from the 

 others, but all fish over the size limit, 8 inches to the base of the caudal fin, are 

 taken ashore, though most of them have not reached the size by which they 

 obtain the highest selling price per lb. 



In the years when there were many large fish the management of the 

 fishery was based on these. At the Skaw, for instance, I have seen plaice-nets 

 with meshes 7 inches wide, and thej' had been in use since 1880 on the north- 

 side of the Skaw. But gradually as the large plaice were caught, it became 

 necessary, in order to get a sufficient quantity, to base the fishery on smaller 

 and smaller fish, and it is quite out of the question now to use plaice-nets, 

 unless then meshes are under 5 inches. At the Skaw the fishermen think 

 they have gone far in proposing meshes of i 1 /^ inches. 



It is a matter of course, when the fishery, as it is here assumed, can be 

 carried on too eagerly, that it is of great consequence with respect to the value 

 of the aggregate profit, if the fish is taken when it is little or when it is a com- 

 modity which demands the full selling price per lb. ; but we get farther away 

 from the latter, the smaller the fish become which are taken ashore. Certainly, 

 we have no statistics to prove that the fish in the Cattegat are now, on an 

 average, much smaller than for instance 10 years ago, but nobody who has 



