80 MAKING A FISHERY. 



In fact, after many years' experience, I can 

 only offer one word of advice to any lessee of a 

 fishery. If you have control of the water, do 

 not, under any condition, or to oblige any neigh- 

 bour, allow a single duck on any part of the 

 fishery. If, after due warning to the owners, 

 they trespass, shoot them, and leave their bodies 

 to float down. In any case neither you yourself 

 nor your keeper should touch them, otherwise 

 you may be charged with theft. Moorhens and 

 dabchicks are probably to be credited with the 

 same propensities in the spawning shallows, and 

 should be kept down as far as possible. 



Fish as Among fish, chub, perch, and eels are 



certainly destructive; and overgrown trout, 

 especially old male fish, are dreadful sharks. 

 Roach, dace, bullheads, sticklebacks, and even 

 minnows, if too numerous, do harm by com- 

 peting with the trout foi the supply of food, 

 and it is questionable whether they do not 

 also at times feed on the ova, alevins, and 

 young fry. Wherever and whenever, in plying 

 nets or other means of catching fish, any of the 

 above are secured, it is hardly necessary to say 

 that they should not be returned to the water. 



Pike. The late Francis Francis, in his " Practical 



Management of Fisheries," commences Chapter 

 IV.: 

 " And now as to the enemies of trout. These are chiefly 



