V. .^s. 



THE CAROLINA POMPANO. 



THE POMPANOES. 



' Lightly and brightly they glide and go 

 The hungry and keen on the top are leaping 

 The lazy and fat on the depths are sleeping." 



William Mackworth Praed, The Red Fisherman. 



* I "'HE Pompano, with its pleasing contours, its banner-like fins, and its 

 scales glistening with the brilliancy of polished silver and gold, is 

 one of the loveliest of our summer visitors. It is not an angler'sfish, nor is 

 it a food-fish of importance from the commercial stand-point, yet it is con- 

 fessedly the king of table-fishes, commanding almost fabulous prices in the 

 markets of our great cities, and esteemed more highly than salmon or bass, 

 moon-fish or Spanish mackerel. It figures in angling literature as "the 

 wood-cock of the seas " — wherefore, the writer is unable to say. 



The genus Trachynotus, to which our Pompanoes belong, is widely dis- 

 tributed through the warmer parts of the Atlantic and Indo-Atlantic 

 regions. Three species are peculiar to Asiatic waters, three have been 

 found only on our own Pacific coast, one is limited to the waters of 

 western Africa, one to those of the Caribbean, while of the four which are 

 abundant on the Atlantic coast of North America, one ranges the wide 

 world over, occurring in warm waters everywhere, one is found on the 

 California coast, and one in Africa. The genus is entirely unknown in 

 the waters of Europe. The species of the Pacific coast, Trachynotus 



