The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: the owner's constant being near to them, it was impossible they should
be stole away from him; and that when he has, after three or four years,
emptied the pond, and expected an increase from them by breeding
young ones, for that they might do so he had, as the rule is, put in three
melters for one spawner, he has, I say, after three or four years, found
neither a young nor old Carp remaining. And the like I have known of
one that had almost watched the pond, and, at a like distance of time, at
the fishing of a pond, found, of seventy or eighty large Carps, not above
five or six: and that he had forborne longer to fish the said pond, but
that he saw, in a hot day in summer, a large Carp swim near the top of
the water with a frog upon his head; and that he, upon that occasion,
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