This trade will be easy, if you are planted within forty miles of London, which will take off quantities for retailing, else it will be hard to find contractors; but for stores, there will be some always beginning in fish, with whom you may deal; and so few will sedulously apply to the conduct of their waters, as is necessary to a command of fish, you need not fear the country will be over-stocked. If the humour of living in the country once repossesseth the gentleman, there may be much more occasion for stores than at present there is, because their seats are let to tenants, and the waters uncultivated. When you have contracted, you are at a certainty, and may proceed; for it is a great inconvenience to take and carry fish, and then be paid with a wrangle; therefore let your terms be certain, and you can have no dispute, because all is to be declared by measure. You will find your stews and auxiliary waters of great use to you upon such occasions; for you clap in what fish you please for fourteen or fifteen days; for instance, five or six hundred carps to a brace of stews, and they take no harm: if they continue longer, it is but feeding them until they are fetched or carried away. _Of fishing for Carriage._ As for the particular ways and methods of taking fish, such as I have dealt in, is at present besides my design, though I may not perhaps altogether pass it by, so much as concerns the carriage of fish, which I look upon as a considerable item in the managery as to profit, which I principally aim at, I shall now observe. When your fishing is in order to remove far, whether the waters are great or small, it must be done in winter, between the first of October, and the last of March; and the colder the weather is, the better. One great caution is, not to handle, or any way to batter or bruise them; for it is a great truth, and common sense speaks it, that fish battered and bruised, will not thrive upon transplanting, so well as others; therefore when your pond is drawn, and you come to the fish, take them out of the water with hoop-nets fixed upon staves about ten feet long, and ten or twelve fish at a time in a net is sufficient, though but a foot long; more, by their weight and struggling, will damage each other insensibly, so as to hinder their growth and thrift, and perhaps be the cause that many die. Let the fish be as little out of the water as may be; for when fouled, and almost choaked with mud, they will clean and recover themselves with water, which freshen upon them often, till you come to put them up for carriage.