The fisheries management in the Ottoman Empire was a neglected subject in the Ottoman historiography. Except for Karekin Deveciyan’s Pêche et Pêcheries en Turquie published in 1926 (the book was first published in 1915 in Ottoman Turkish titled Türkiye’de Bal?k ve Bal?kç?l?k), there was generally a lack of interest with the management of Ottoman fisheries. With a careful reading of this book and other archival sources, I will try to shed light on the management of fisheries in Istanbul, the rules and regulations concerning fisheries, taxation of fish resources, and traditional management of provincial fisheries. This general assessment of the fisheries’ management in the Ottoman Empire will be supported by looking at a specific case in the Lake Karla of the district of T?rhala (Trikkala) during the first half of the nineteenth century. The case is about the conflict among local villages for setting up independent fisheries on Lake Karla, where only the villagers of Kanalia claimed ownership rights. Fishing was used to be the main activity in Kanalia until it was drained between 1960 and 2000. The people of Kanalia claimed that they possessed a Sultanic decree which entitled them as the sole possessor of the fishery and prohibited others to establish another fishery on the lake. They argued that from time immemorial they were regulating access to fish resources and were paying the tithe to the imperial treasury. The case is interesting because it reveals how an important source of subsistence could be contested and raised conflicts among villagers living adjacent to a freshwater source and would cause complex manifestations before the law. The case also reveals how everyday practices of the local people came into conflict with that of state laws, which were essentially used to manage fish resources and to organize taxation.