The History of Esculent Fish

by Roger North

Of the Manner of feeding Fish.

In a stew you may keep up thirty or forty carps, from October to March in winter, without feeding; and by fishing with trammels or flews in March or April, you may take from your great waters, to recruit the stews; but you must not fail to feed all summer, from March to October again, as constantly as your cooped chickens are fed, and to as good and certain account. The reason you feed in summer, and not in winter, is, because the fish will lie close in cold weather, and feed little, not caring to stir, especially upon the shoals, where it is proper to give them meat.

If you would bring more fish together into your stews, you may preserve and improve them by feeding; but there are bounds, because the water is but small, and will not admit any great number: but if you have a great number of fish to be kept for an opportunity, and you put them into a considerable water, you may in that manner stock to any quantity, taking care duly to feed them; and so not only maintain, but improve one thousand per acre; but if thus over-stocked, and you do not feed sufficiently, they will sink, and you be a great loser.

Now, as for your stews, the care of feeding is best instructed to a butler or gardener, who are or should be always at home, because the constancy and regularity of serving the fish, conduce very much to their well eating and thriving; for they will expect their meat as duly as horses, and appetite in any creature wastes by disappointment.

Any sort of grain boiled is good to feed with, especially malt coarse ground. Pease boiled a turn or two are as good as any other grain. The grains after a brewing, while they are good and sweet, are very proper; but one bushel of malt not brewed, will go as far as two of grains. The chippings of bread, and orts of a table, steeped in tap-droppings of good strong beer or ale, are very good food for carps. Of these the quantity of two quarts to thirty table carps every day is sufficient; and to feed morning and evening, is better than once a day only.

The place to feed is towards the mouth, at about half yard deep; for that keeps the deep clean and fit, as a parlour to retire to, and rest in. The meat plainly thrown into the water, without other device, will be picked up by them, and nothing shall be lost. However, there are several ways to give them meat, especially pease, which are useful, as a square board let down, with the meat upon it, by the four corners, whence a string comes, and made fast to a stick like a scale, is very manageable. A gentleman had found out a very facile way to feed carps, worth noting, because I have heard it was successful. He let down the very kettle in which the pease were boiled, into the water, and the fish would come and take out every grain.

When you feed in the greater waters, where the numbers are also great, it will be a charge as well as trouble; but when you take out the fish, and see how they are thriven, you will allow both well employed. Either malt boiled, or fresh grains, is the best food in this case: and what is not supplied from your own house and brewings, you may take of neighbouring alehouses, who will be willing, for a small matter, to throw into the water, at a place you shall assign, a certain quantity every brewing. Thus carps may be fed and raised like capons. And tenches will feed in stews, as well as carps; but perch, as was said, are not for a stew in feeding time.

There is a sort of food for fish, which I may call accidental, and is no less improving, than the best you can contrive; and that is, when the waters happen to receive the wash of commons where many sheep are fed, the water is enriched by the earth, and shall feed many more carps, than otherwise it would. This is the case at Antlingham in Norfolk, where there are ponds in a common that raise carp wonderfully, although the soil be sandy and poor, and the waters seldom let out; and this earthy wash is the reason of it. When cattle are fed upon the pastures by your great waters, if they have access to them, in hot weather they will take delight to stand in the water; the dung that falls from them, is also a very great nourishment of fish.

It is believed, that about London the fishmongers have ways of making carps fat by the offal of butchers shops and slaughter-houses; which I do not at all recommend to others, if that were to be done, because a sudden filthy feeding can neither be wholesome nor sweet. But I have not observed, that carps do in any sort delight in blood, nor indeed any other fish, except breams; and those will feed much upon new grains mixed with blood; so that if you will be at the charge of feeding them in stews, like carps, you may have large breams in six or seven years, which are a very slow grower, unless it be in springy waters.