106 MAKING A FISHERY. 



natural tendency of the men dragging the nets 

 under these circumstances is to take a pace 

 outwards from the bank on to the harder 

 ground, and thus save themselves the labour 

 and inconvenience of having to toil along, step 

 after step, up to their knees in the mud. As 

 soon as they do this pike after pike will take 

 the opportunity of escaping by swimming up 

 in the space between the men and the bank, 

 and if the water is, as usually happens, dis- 

 coloured by the tramping about, their escape is 

 unnoticed, even by those directing the operations. 

 The use of two nets, dragged one behind the 

 other down towards the third or stop-net, and 

 the adoption of the improved method of working, 

 described in a previous paragraph of this 

 chapter, certainly tend to remove one source of 

 danger in this respect. Where this improve- 

 ment is adopted one net is always above the 

 water to be netted, and the fish never have the 

 chance of dashing upstream, and, for the time, 

 getting away altogether. 

 Netting to be The most vital point, and one requiring in- 

 " "■'"' J - m y- creasing attention, is to check the tendency 

 which invariably exists on the part of the men 

 to hurry the nets. It appears as if their one 

 aim was to get over the ground as rapidly as 

 possible, and one would imagine that their 

 notion of the proceedings was that the greater 



