484 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



been, but there is a ready sale for all that are 

 brought to market, most people thinking this a 

 very good table fish. And with so few fishes in the 

 Gulf of Maine that can be classed as "game" 

 (that is, affording sport on rod and reel), we may 

 well wish the tautog were more plentiful there, for 

 they put up so strong a resistance that tautog fish- 

 ing is very good sport indeed. 



Along the stretch from Manomet Headland, 

 Plymouth, to Cape Ann, tautog are caught either 

 from a boat at anchor over submerged ledges or 

 bouldery bottom, or by casting with a long rod 

 from dry ledges or from the rocky coast line. In 

 either case, the fish are so local and irregular in 

 distribution (depending on the food supply and 

 also on the contour of the rocks) and so stationary 

 that it is worth fishing for them only in certain 

 spots. Even so, a few feet one way or the other 

 may mean the difference between success and fail- 

 ure. In Cape Cod Bay, however, where the tautog 

 are on smooth bottom, they lie in little openings 

 among eel grass (whenever there is any), "with just 

 their snouts sticking out" as an angler friend writes 

 us, 16 "and, by lowering a fiddler or hermit crab in 

 the clear spot in front of them, they will be caught 

 in very shallow water." 



Fishing the Cohasset rocks, we have found 

 green crabs (Carcinides) the most attractive bait, 

 whole if small enough, cut if larger; rock crabs 

 (Cancer), or hermit crabs second best; large 

 snails or cockles (Polynices) fairly good; lobster 

 would perhaps be best of all, were it not so 

 expensive. Mussels are often successful. And 

 small whole clams are good, hooked through the 

 "neck", (actually the siphon) with the shell 

 cracked so as to let the juices escape, but they are 

 next to worthless if shelled because they are 

 stolen almost at once by the swarms of cunners. 

 Anglers tell us that the same baits are used along 

 the north shore of Massachusetts Bay. In Cape 

 Cod Bay, where tautog are caught on smooth 

 bottom (p. 480), the baits most used are hermit 

 crabs and fiddler crabs. 16 We once had a good- 

 ; ized tautog strike a sea worm (Nereis), behind 

 our boat, while trolling for striped bass. 



When a tautog bites, it passes the bait back to 

 the pharyngeal teeth, to crush the shell before 

 swallowing; in doing so he gives several distinctive 

 jerks or twitches. This is the time to hook him; 

 many are missed by being struck too soon by 

 anglers not experienced in the ways of the tautog. 



THE REMORAS OR SHARK SUCKERS. FAMILY ECHENEIDAE 



The several remoras are easiy distinguished 

 from all other fishes by the fact that the spiny part 

 of the dorsal fin is modified into a flat oval sucking- 

 plate, composed of a double series of cartilaginous 

 ciossplates with serrated free edges, and situated 

 on the top of the head and neck. All the remoras, 

 too, are slender of form with the lower jaw 

 projecting well beyond the upper. Their mouths 

 are armed with many small pointed teeth; their 

 soft dorsal and anal fins are about the same in 

 form and size, the one above the other; and their 

 pectoral fins are set high up on the sides. The 

 lower surface of the head is convex, the upper flat 

 (a very conspicuous feature) with the lower surface 

 of the body nearly as deeply colored as the upper 

 so that the back is often mistaken for the belly. 

 The members of this family all attach themselves 



15 Quoted from a letter from Henry Lyman. 



11 Not having fished there for tautog, we welcome this information from 

 Henry Lyman. 



to other fishes, or to sea turtles, by their sucking 

 disk, usually clinging to the sides of their hosts, 

 but often within the mouth or gill cavities of the 

 larger sharks and of the giant rays. 17 They are 

 carried about in this way, and they feed on the 

 scraps from the meals of their transporters. All 

 the remoras are tropical; they appear only as 

 strays in boreal seas, usually fast to sharks or 

 to swordfish. 



We follow Sumner, Osburn, and Cole 18 in 

 uniting under one species the shark sucker 

 (naucrates), with more than 21 plates but a 

 sucking disk less than one-fourth as long as the 

 body, and the pilot sucker (naucrateoides) , with 

 only 20 or 21 plates but longer, fishes that are 

 otherwise indistinguishable one from the other. 



" Gudgor (Natural History, vol. 22, No. 3, May-June 1922, pp. 243-249) 

 gives an interesting account of this habit. 

 i» Bull. U. S. Bur. Fish. vol. 31, Pt. 2, 1913, p. 766. 



