Liminological Shipping Routes (WIP)

[inspectorjavert]

So this is a part of the lore I'm making as part of my world building. This is a map of Dragon Lake, the largest lake in the known portion of my world. It serves to major purposes for the people in my world. First it has a very high fish population and fishing boats routinely travel the lake, fishing during the morning and afternoons when the fish feed, and moving to the islands in the lake to mine salt from the rock formations there in the evenings. The salt is used to preserve the fish, which are sold at the nearest port when the ship has either filled its holds, or decided to cut its losses.

The second purpose of the lake is to serve as a shipping hub, an ancient civilization built very complex canals on both ends of the lake which grant access to the "not" Mediterranean sea and a major inland river from the lake. So what do you think of my map and the lore I've written behind it?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: You know what would have been really awesome? If I remembered to add my attachments when I posted something.

[Jean-Abdel]

Aren't canals supposed to go somewhere ? I don't understand what you're exactly showing with these pictograms, canals should be a line going somewhere. Are the sea and the river off the map? Otherwise the map and lore are both good

[inspectorjavert]

Well originally I had the canal on the left connecting to another large lake but recently I've changed it to directly access the sea in either case both the sea and river are off the map. Thanks for the feedback.

[Varghal1]

Firstly i love settings that heavily incorporate inlandbodys of water. But I think your setting, and thus the map leaves questions.

Why are all ports the farthest possible distance from the canals? If the fish is so important in the story, wouldn't it make much more sense to sell it where it can easily be shipped to the rest of the world?

Only one port is part of the saltrunlane. Are the other ports less important?

Mining and Fishing are both fulltime-jobs, having a miner fish on the run or vice versa seems very unlikely. Maybe it would make more sense to split the jobs, so miners and fisherman would have to interact in the ports (maybe you could also include fishconservers as a profession) This would create a full economy and explain the existence of multiple portcitys.

Lastly this is a prime example why scale is important. For all the info we're given "large lake" could be as big as the caspian sea (making some of my critique invalid) or as small as the lake in my hometown.