Part 3
The peculiar use of these, is, to maintain fish for the daily use of your house and friends, whereby you may with little trouble, and at any time, take out all or any fish they contain; therefore it is good to place them in some inclosed grounds near the chief mansion-house. Some recess in a garden is very proper, because the fish are fenced from robbers, and your journey to them is short and easy, and your eye will be often upon them, which will conduce to their being well kept, and they will be an ornament to the walks.
If you have two great waters of three or four acres apiece, I do advise, that you be not without four stews, of two rods wide and three rods long apiece. The way of making these, is, by cutting the sides down somewhat sloping, and carrying the bottom in a perpetual decline from end to end, so as you may have a convenient mouth, such as horse-ponds usually have, for taking out your nets when you draw for fish.
If you have ground enough, it is better to make a mouth at both ends, and the deepest part in the middle; for so you may draw your nets backwards and forwards, losing less time, and the fish will not have such shelter, as the depth under a head will be. Besides this, you will find the fish will delight themselves in coming upon the shoals, and it may be, thrive better. But for this manner you must allow at least a rod of ground in length more than for the other.
These I intend for carps chiefly, though not absolutely; and if you find the tench and perch increase and prosper, you may make other lesser stews to accommodate them apart, if you please; and so you will have them at command, without disturbing the other fish; only observe this by the way, that perch will scarce live in stews and small waters, if the weather be hot, but will pine, grow lean and thin, if not die; therefore the stews are to be their winter-quarters; from whence you take them for the use of your table, but in summer translate them to the greater ponds.
These stews being designed at the same time you raise the pond-heads, will be done almost under the same charge, as is hinted elsewhere: and once made, you have the fish at a minute’s warning ready for the kettle, or any other use; which convenience is the great end of all the charge and pains, and without it, you are not a master of fish.
_Of Moats._
These were made ordinarily for securing of dwelling houses, rather than for fish; and since wars have been less frequent, or rather, grown so much an art, that the ancient way of fortifying is not useful, are almost disused. For being laid so near the dwelling, as we observe commonly they are, for want of sun, and air to purge them, the water grows putrid and slimy, yielding no pleasant scent to the house; besides, when laid dry, as is necessary sometimes, the stench and filth of them are insupportable; and therefore many gentlemen have either slighted them wholly, or presented the form only, as a walk or low garden, planting the side-walls with fruit, but without water: and so is the moat at Althrop in Northamptonshire, a seat of the Earl of Sunderland’s, much of late beautified, put in order, and from a defect, turned to a great perfection.
But I am an advocate for moats, ordered as they might be, and do esteem them a very great accomplishment to a seat in many respects. 1. Though they are not a fortification for resistance in time of war, yet against pilferers and tumults, they are sufficient and better than any walls you shall make. 2. They shall nourish a world of fish, which, though not so well at command as in other waters, yet for angling, and the sporting part of net-fishing, are better than the others are, because nearer, and fished with smaller nets. 3. They are an ornament and delight to a seat beyond imagination, as will appear when I have shewed how I would have them made; and of that next.
They should encompass not only the house, but all the out houses, yards, orchards, and it may be a pightle or two, such as are neat for ordinary convenience of horses, or a cow or two: I say, all that is called the home-stall, should be environed by the moat. It should be no less than forty yards, or one hundred feet over, cut down with a slope on each side, as your pond-heads were, without walls; which are too great charge to keep in repair. And towards the pastures, you may make a mouth; if it runs the whole length of one side of your moat, it is the better, and fish will increase and thrive from it. Let there be but two avenues with bridges: And to prevent the charge of crossing so great a length with bridge-work, you may leave the earth on each side broad enough for carriages, but not to meet by ten or twelve feet, which may be covered by a bridge, and underneath, the water to communicate; so the pass shall be, as upon a causeway, with a draw-bridge; for so it may be made, if you please.
I know all situations and soils will not admit of this; for some are low and marshy, and so have naturally too much water; others are upon hanging ground, which for want of a level, cannot be moated in this manner; others are sandy, and will not hold water: But the happiest of all, is, such a situation as either hath springs, or will take a current, and discharge it again by a sluice or gates, so that the moat shall be perpetually fed with a fresh water, and may at any time be laid dry; therefore in these affairs there must be a previous judgment of the place, else undertakings will not succeed, and that is a great disgrace.
Now, such a moat as this hath all the convenience I spoke of, besides serves the house with water; which from the wind and the sun’s free access to it in a great body, will certainly preserve it sweet and wholesome. The sinks of the house will not foul it, as it doth in lesser quantities, even to kill the fish, as well as make the water unfit for use. The view of it is a delicacy the greatest epicures in gardening court, and we hear of it by the name of canal. Then the moving upon it in boats, either in calm weather, or with some wind that stirs the water, and gives a power of employing somewhat of sail, after a romantick way; and thus circling an house, taking the variety of walks and gardens here and there, visiting stables and offices, seeing the horses air upon the banks, &c. are pleasures not given to be understood by any but statesmen, laid aside for their honesty, who by experience are taught the variety of greatness, and have an understanding to distinguish the true felicities of life.
I know the objection of charge, which must be very great in such a work, as this; but I consider the great profusion of money that is allowed to transitory vanities; such as habits, treats, equipages, not to mention vices too well known; such as are tellers of money and depauperate families, leaving nothing but diseases to shew for them. If so much, or a much less proportion being disposed to employ mankind, the poor especially, in making holes, and filling them again, were much more commendable. What is it then to produce advantage to yourself and family, to improve your habitation and estate, preserve health and reputation?
But even the charge might be alleviated, if not in great part saved, by good management. For such gross works as this may be put out to undertakers, and you may compute by the solid foot or yard, what the charge will be; and the masters will see the men work, which you cannot do if you are master, and do all by the day. Then, every one delights to have raised walks and terraces about an house and garden; so that the earth being employed in such, and raising mounts in proper places, will produce a real equivalent for the charge: but this is a digression which here I conclude, and return to the affair of fish.
Then considering moats, as commonly they are, it is not expected that the fish should be much at command, because it is difficult, and perhaps not convenient to lay them dry. However, they should be kept full stocked, and will maintain a great many. This will mend your angling, and the fishing with nets will seldom be labour in vain, as certainly it will prove if under stocked. These waters will receive a great share of your fry and stores that are superfluous, and so preserve them.
If a moat come to be laid dry, as will be necessary sometimes to keep it from turning all to mud, after you have by a sluice or cut, drained the water as low as you can, make dams with boards and clay, and ram them to be water-tight; so you may toss the water out of one division to another, and take out the fish in good order; but if you dry all together, you will not be able to secure all; besides, having one division full of water, you can relieve the fry and eels by letting it upon them; which else, for want of a fresh to let in upon them, will be lost. So when one division is fished, that is relieved by tossing the water out of the next. And this course is not amiss, though you intend to throw out the mud; for the saving the fish while you are taking them out, quits the charge of making the stanks.
_Of other auxiliary Waters._
You must have other waters besides stews, to assist in the disposition of the fish; for laying a pond in that great order dry, as I propose, once in every year, there will be a great quantity of fish to be disposed; so that you must have a sufficient quantity of waters to receive when you abound, and to recruit when you want. The stews will carry sixty, seventy, or eighty carps apiece, supposing you spend continually out of them; so other waters will receive their proportion, by sending this way and that the stock of fish, you will preserve all, and know where to find them again.
These bye-ponds will be dispersed about your estate, where perhaps your predecessors thought fit to make them, for the convenience of their pastures, or you may make them as you can best, with respect to charge and other advantages, observing always in a ground to take that part for your pond, to which the waters are most apt to settle. In some places, but very few, the waters stand best upon the hills, and the valleys, when sandy, will not hold well. The nature of the ground is to be regarded.
Some ponds of good depth, of about five or six rods square, should be assigned to maintain pikes, which, when great, ought to be kept by themselves; for in a few years they will devour other fish, and greatly surprise you in the destruction they will make. But I shall speak more of this when I come to the stocking of waters.
I do much approve of cleansing and carting out the mud of small standing waters once in seven or eight years, and so letting them lie dry one summer, if you can spare the water; which, from moats, and pasture-waters, can scarce be done, without great inconvenience. These matters exercise the invention of a good œconomist, who will endeavour to prevent damage, as well as save time, and turn even his pleasures to profit.
One thing I advertise here, which is, not to let carps continue in a small standing water above two summers and one winter; for so you run a much less hazard from frost, than otherwise you will do; besides, the fish will grow much more upon transplanting, than by continuing in the same water, and more in the great, than in the small waters: but of these things more afterwards.
_The Course of laying the Great Waters Dry._
Before I come to the business of fish, I will finish what I had to say about ponds, and the conduct of them; and of that only remains to speak of the course of laying them dry.
As for the smaller waters, I have touched what concerns them already; as for the greater, or principal ponds, proceed thus:
In October, or after, draw the sluice of the first made pond, and lay it as dry as possible you can. It may be the sluice, especially if the pond be many acres, will not vent the water suddenly. That is of no great import, because, as the waters fall, you will have opportunity of fishing with nets, and so clear the fish by degrees; which left to the last, will be too great a burden to clear, and will not be done without damage; besides, the hurry will disorder every thing. If the sluice will not vent all the water from the pan, a labourer or two will soon throw it out with scuppets. Here you find the use of the channels of diversion, spoke of before; for they will keep off all land-waters, if the time should prove rainy, and so permit the pond to empty, and continue dry, which you could not answer for a day without them; and therefore they should be made on both sides of the waters, on each hill one, which will defend the shot of these hills, that otherwise would retard the work.
When your pond is dry, and thus secured, keep it so all summer, and you may make a profit of the soil sufficiently, either by ploughing or feeding. And at Michaelmas next, or a little sooner, let fall the sluice, and turn in all the water you can, that the pond may fill, and at the being near full, it is ready to receive the stock again.
At the same time lay another dry, proceeding as before; which you may do alternately during your whole life: nay, if you have but two great ponds, this is the best course, and will turn most to the profit and feed of the fish, as I shall shew when I speak of feeding.
If your stock be very great, you may let your ponds stand full two or three years, but not longer, unless you delight to see starved lean fish; for such they will certainly be, unless you keep an under-stock by three-fourths continuing in the same water four or five years. And it is a certain rule, that the oftener waters are laid dry, the better the feed of the fish shall be, and more shall be maintained. And a little experience will demonstrate the advantage to be great, as to the size, fatness, and sweetness of the fish.
When your pond is dry, concern not yourself to carry out the mud for the first fourteen or fifteen years; and then let it be only out of the pan whence you took the earth to raise the bank, but never break the turf of the rest of the ground flowed: but when it comes to be a yard thick in mere mud, it is good to take it out; for though mud be good to improve ground, yet, when it is taken from the pond, down to the dead earth, your ground and soil are depauperated, and the water by consequence, which cheats the fish, that is, yourself.
_Of the Breeding of Fish._
Having done with ponds, the manner of making, preserving, and using them, I intend next to discourse of fish, and how best to dispose them to maintain the waters in full stock: but before I come to the stocking of waters, I must speak of the course of breeding fish, whereby the stock is to be recruited and supplied.
Some have thought, that great difference is to be found in the sorts of carps, some whereof are more apt to grow up to a great size, others to spread and look thick, and others for the sweetness of the meat. I do not deny but there may be some difference, but I cannot esteem it so considerable, as to be worth the looking after. Varieties in nature are infinite, and in the several breeds of fish, as of other creatures: yet I have not observed so much of it in carps, that I could tell how to distinguish them, where I could promise myself better success with one sort than another. This is a nicety which fishmongers, that make a trade of buying and selling, talk of, intending it only as a topic of mystery, which all trades affect, and to have something to say for valuing or undervaluing, as they sell or buy, to justify in their talk the prices they propose to take or give; therefore this nicety is left to them.
I do yet believe, that a sort of fish, bred in great numbers in bad waters, over-stocked, and almost starved, may in process of time degenerate, and both lose a good shape, and be less apt to grow up to a due greatness, than others that have been better descended of a cultivated stock: and on the other side, it is no less possible, that by coming into good quarters, fish may improve and mend; so that a gentleman is to expect the goodness of his fish from the cleanness of his waters, and the plenty of their feed, and not from any choice of his stock or breed; and let him get them where he may, if well ordered, he may assure himself they shall answer his expectations.
It is a common observation, that some waters will, and others will not breed. It is my experience, that most waters, the first year after having lain dry a summer, do breed, and that numerously, especially carps, which I have known increase to such an incredible fry, that I have been troubled how to dispose them, so as to have them again after three or four years, when they became good stock for great waters. Eels and perch are of very good use to keep down the breed of fish; for they prey much upon the spawn and fry of bred fish, and will probably destroy the superfluity of them.
The quality of breeding is scarce to be found out by any certain symptom; for some very promising ponds do not prove useful that way. The best indication I know of a breeding pond, is, when there is good store of rush and grazing about it, and gravelly shoals, such as horse-ponds usually have. When a water takes thus to breeding, with a few milters and spawners, two or three of each, you may stock a country.
As for pike, perch, tench, roach, &c. they are observed to breed in almost any waters, and very numerously; only eels never breed in perfect standing waters, and without springs; and in such are neither found, nor increase, but by putting in; but where springs are, they are never wanting, though not put in: and which is most strange of all, no person ever saw in an eel the least token of propagation, either by milt or spawn in them; so that whether they breed at all, and how they are produced, are questions equally mysterious.
_The Manner of Stocking Waters._
I have found a great analogy between the stocking waters with fish, and pastures with cattle; and that the same conduct and discretion belong to both. Waters may be over-stocked, as pastures often are; so both may be under-stocked. The latter is the less error; for if you over-stock, you lose the whole summer’s seed; if you under-stock, you lose only the rest of your profit; what you do seed, is much the better, and turns to account by more ready sale. So also of beasts; some of the same age and seeding will not thrive so well as others. I have found the like in my fish. And waters themselves, like pastures, have varieties of goodness; some will raise carps from five to eighteen inches, in five years; others will not do it in ten. This is most sensible between your great waters made upon a fall, and the small standing waters, which have more inconveniencies, and are liable to frosts, and other casualties, more than the others are.
Therefore I propose, that the smaller waters should be used as nurseries, and either to breed, or be stocked with the bred fry of other waters, to raise them to a fitness for stores in your principal feed; that is, to six or eight inches. And of these bred fry, you may put one hundred into four rods square of water, or near that proportion, and fail not to remove them in two years time; and so you will have good recruits of stores for your greater waters.
And thus the many thousands of bred fish that you will have upon the draining your great waters, which many are apt to slight, may be sent several ways to the waters about that and your neighbour’s grounds, and there fed up like chickens, and in time turn to great profit, as I shall shew; therefore they ought not to be slighted, but carefully to be preserved; the rather, because considering a pond (as I propose) will, though but four acres, feed up one thousand six hundred carps in two, and perhaps in one year, from ten to eighteen inches, fit for your table-presents, or sale. How is it possible you should restock your waters the winter after, without this providential forecast, whereby you have magazines of fish in other ponds, fit stores to supply your occasion?
Now, as for your great and principal waters, it is hard to assign a certain proportion for the stock; but perusing the methods I propose, you will soon come to the knowledge what stock the waters will carry; for laying a pond dry every year, you will see the fish well fed, or else thin and lean; and accordingly you judge whether the stock was too little or too much for the water. Thus, by the thickness or fatness of cattle, you judge if your ground will carry more or not; and both as to species and number of fish, experience must be your guide in the stocking of waters.
However, to save loss of time, which you must sustain by making your own experience, I will give the best directions I can, for the first entry upon your business, and not leave the matter wholly in the dark.
If the pond be supplied with a white fat water upon great rains, you may put into it at first three hundred carps per acre, in case there be three or four acres, else not so many. And it will be expedient to put in forty or fifty tenches for a trial, because this sort of water is most proper for carp; but being laid dry, sometimes may prove well for tenches also, which, when thriven, are a very good fish; but this proof by trial must determine.
You may add perches to any number, and not hurt the water: I propose six hundred; for though they are great breeders, being also fishes of prey, they devour their own species as much, if not more than any other; and by destroying the fry of bred fish, they preserve the food for the maintenance of their feeders, which the fry would intercept; so do good rather than harm. I took once out of a perch’s belly of ten inches, ten other perches. This is esteemed one of the best sorts of fresh-water fish, and therefore deservedly to be encouraged.
Have a great care of putting bream in this sort of waters; for they will grow up very slowly, though at last they will be great; but in the mean time they breed so infinitely, and such a slimy nasty fry, as both robs and fouls the water, making it unfit for the other fish. But when a water is ten or twelve acres, and fed with some brook, winter and summer, they will do very well; otherwise not to be made use of.
As for pike, which are inferior to no fresh-water fish, and now more esteemed than ever, being less plentiful upon draining the fens, and so harm more; they are dangerous guests in the great waters; for if grown large, they will devour and destroy the best fish, and depopulate the water. But thus far you may trust them; if you can procure one hundred jacks once in two years not exceeding nine inches, you may put them with the carps into your great waters, so as your carps are not under nine or ten inches; but take care that they stay not above two years, and then send them to their peculiar ponds, and feed them as I shall hereafter discourse, and so they will grow to be very large and fine fish, which you would not want.
I cannot advise the stocking great standing waters with eels, for they grow slow, and being of an indifferent size, will be lean and dry; but in moats, which have the sinks of an house drain into it, is proper enough for them, and they will thrive in it. It is a sort of fish, as I noted, that belongs to a springy water.
These directions belong to the first stocking of new-made ponds, which, as to feeding, lie under a disadvantage; the reason I have touched, and is from the dead earth in the pan from whence you raised the bank, and that at first, which is about an acre, is almost unprofitable. But afterwards, when that dead ground hath contracted a little new soil from the settling of the water, especially after land-floods, and lain dry a summer, whereby it will begin to graze, it will become like the rest of the pond, and put forth as good feed for fish as any other part. This may seem strange and new, but is a great truth, known to me from indubitable experience.