ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the legal and institutional conditions of the local fisheries, and the development and workings of the resource management regime, and end with an assessment of its effectiveness. The prominence of fisheries as a common property resource in the news is also mirrored in the commons studies research. Most of the writings on the subject are focused on marine fisheries, and only very few on lakes. The regulatory tool of fisheries treaties and fishermen’s ordinances gave both the fishermen and their authorities the opportunity to actively manage Lake Constance’s fish stocks. In addition to such natural factors, human actions other than the fisheries also could have a detrimental effect on the fish stocks. The mill on the Rhine bridge demonstrates how human actions could affect fish stocks locally, but only the fisheries had the potential to harm them as a whole.
