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Food and Farming Page

Tench

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Sturgeon

Trout

This fish is generally found in foul and weedy waters, and in such places as are well supplied with rushes. They thrive best in standing waters, and are more numerous in pools and ponds than in rivers. Those taken in the latter, however, are preferable for the table. It does not often exceed four or five pounds in weight, and is in England esteemed as a delicious and wholesome food. As, however, they are sometimes found in waters where the mud is excessively fetid, their flavour, if cooked immediately on being caught, is often very unpleasant; but if they are transferred into clear water, they soon recover from the obnoxious taint.

A Singular Quality in the Tench: It is said that the tench is possessed of such healing properties among the finny tribes, that even the voracious pike spares it on this account:

The pike, fell tyrant of the liquid plain,

With ravenous waste devours his fellow train;

Yet howsoe'er with raging famine pined,

The tench he spares, a medicinal kind;

For when by wounds distress'd, or sore disease,

He courts the salutary fish for ease;

Close to his scales the kind physician glides,

And sweats a healing balsam from his sides.

In our estimation, however, this self-denial in the pike may be attributed to a less poetical cause; namely, from the mud-loving disposition of the tench, it is enabled to keep itself so completely concealed at the bottom of its aqueous haunts, that it remains secure from the attacks of its predatory neighbour.