Fishery

A place prepared for catching fish with nets or hooks. This is commonly applied to the place of drawing a seine or net.

1 Whart. (Pa.) 131, 132.

A right or liberty of taking fish; a species of incorporeal hereditament, anciently termed "piscary," of which there are several kinds.

2 Bl. Comm. 34, 39; 3 Kent, Comm. 409-418; Angell, Watercourses, § 61 et seq.; Angell, Tide Waters, p. 124, c. 5.

A common of fishery is not an exclusive right, but one enjoyed in common with certain other persons.

3 Kent, Comm. 329.

A free fishery issaid to be a franchise in the hands of a subject, existing by grant or prescription, distinct from an ownership in the soil. It is an exclusive right, and applies to a public navigable river, without any right in the soil.

3 Kent, Comm. 329.

A several fishery is one by which the party claiming it has the right of fishing, independently of all others, so that no person can have a coextensive right with him in the object claimed; but a partial and independent right in another, or a limited liberty, does not derogate from the right of the owner.

5 Burrows, 2814.

A distinction has been made between a common fishery (com,mune piscarium), which may mean for all mankind, as in the certain other persons, in a particular stream.

8 Taunt. 183.

Mr. Angell seems to think that "common of fishery" and "free fishery" are convertible terms. Angell, Watercourses, c.

6, §§ 3, 4.

Mr. Woolrych says that sometimes a free fishery is confounded with a several, sometimes it is said to be synonymous with common, and again it is treated as distinct from either.

Woolr. Waters, 97.

A several fishery, as its name imports, is an exclusive property. This, however, is not to be understood as depriving the territorial owner of his right to a several fishery when he grants to another person permission to fish; for he would continue to be the several proprietor, although he should suffer a stranger to hold a coextensive right with himself.

Woolr. Waters, 96.

These distinctions in relation to several, free, and common of fishery are not strongly marked, and the lines are sometimes scarcely perceptible. "Instead of going into the black-letter books to learn what was a fishery, and a free fishery and a several fishery," says Huston, J., "I am disposed to regard our own acts, even though differing from old feudal law."

1 Whart. (Pa.) 132.