Definition
The right or privilege of fishing in waters belonging to another person. Piscary is a species of incorporeal hereditament — a property right that runs with land and may be granted, inherited, or extinguished without any transfer of the physical watercourse itself. The term appears most commonly in its compound form, common of piscary, which designates a profit à prendre: the right shared among multiple persons to fish in waters held by a landowner or held in common.
Piscary is narrower than a general fishery right. It describes the right as exercised over another's water, not the owner's own unfettered right to fish in waters he holds in severalty. That distinction — whose water, and on what legal basis — is the operative question in historical property analysis.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "The right or privilege of fishing in somebody else's waters." Also listed as a synonym for fishery.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The right or privilege of fishing in another man's waters." Attributed to Blackstone.
The common definitions here are unusually close to the legal ones, but the gap worth noting is this: in ordinary speech, piscary (when used at all) tends to collapse into a synonym for fishery, implying any fishing right. In law, the term carries a specific possessory and relational character — it presupposes that the fisher is not the owner of the soil or water, and that the right derives from grant, custom, or prescription. A researcher who treats piscary and fishery as interchangeable will miss that structural distinction.
Common Confusion
Piscary and fishery overlap substantially in historical legal usage and in the secondary dictionaries, which frequently cross-reference one to the other without distinguishing them (Rapalje & Lawrence and Anderson's both simply redirect to FISHERY). The terms are not identical. Fishery is the broader category, encompassing several recognized forms — free fishery, several fishery, common of fishery, and common of piscary — each with distinct ownership and exclusivity characteristics. Piscary specifically describes a common or shared right in another's water. Using piscary where several fishery (an exclusive right) is meant, or vice versa, produces material analytical error in historical property disputes.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Common of piscary: The most frequently encountered form. A profit à prendre shared among defined persons (often tenants of a manor) to fish in waters belonging to the lord or held in common. It is non-exclusive by nature and historically regulated by the custom of the manor.
Piscary in gross: A piscary right held independently of land ownership, attached to a person rather than a dominant tenement. Historically recognized but disfavored compared to appurtenant rights.
Why It Matters in Research
Structural pattern: This is a straightforward single-meaning term with significant historical depth. Research traps arise from the dictionary cross-referencing pattern and from the term's obsolescence in modern American law.
First, the cross-referencing trap. Four of the six source dictionaries redirect piscary to fishery without substantive entry. Researchers who follow those redirects without first noting that piscary is the narrower, subordinate form of the fishery taxonomy risk flattening a meaningful distinction that courts historically enforced.
Second, piscary is almost entirely a term of English common law property doctrine. Its relevance in American legal sources is concentrated in the colonial and early republic periods, in jurisdictions that received English real property law directly (particularly the original thirteen states and those following common law riparian traditions). Researchers working in western states or jurisdictions with civil law or prior appropriation water traditions should expect piscary to appear rarely if at all, and its absence from regional sources should not be treated as silence on the underlying fishing rights question.
Third, the term's disappearance from modern American practice does not mean it disappeared from deeds and grants. Historical instruments — particularly colonial-era manorial grants, New England town commons documents, and early land patents — may convey or reserve piscary rights using this terminology. Title researchers and historians working in those materials need the term on hand even if it never appears in modern caselaw.
Fourth, the connection to the profit à prendre framework is essential context. Piscary is not a mere license to fish; it is a property interest potentially binding on successors in title. This distinction matters when tracing whether a historical fishing right survived conveyance, merger, or abandonment.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in full agreement on the core definition, differing only in depth. Black's (both editions) provides the clearest stand-alone entry. Bouvier adds the essential framing — "the right of fishing in the waters of another" — which correctly centers the relational character of the right. Burrill, characteristically, supplies the Latin and Law French roots (piscaria; pescherie) and the Blackstone citation (2 Bl. Com. 34, 35), placing the term in its common law doctrinal home.
What the historical dictionaries do not do is distinguish piscary from the other forms of fishery with any rigor, or explain how common of piscary relates to the broader taxonomy of profits à prendre. Researchers should not rely on these entries alone for that analysis; the fuller treatment lives in Blackstone's Commentaries and in the English treatise tradition on real property.
Jurisdictional Note
Piscary as a term of art is almost exclusively a common law (English and early American) concept. It has little to no formal presence in civil law jurisdictions or in western American states operating under prior appropriation water law. In jurisdictions that retain common law riparian principles, piscary rights attached to historical grants may still be theoretically cognizable, though modern courts rarely encounter the term.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Fishery (for the full taxonomy of fishing rights, including several fishery, free fishery, and common of fishery)
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Commons and Common Rights (for the profit à prendre framework and common of piscary in context)