288 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHEKIES 



who have written of it have accepted without question Mitchill's (1815, p. 400) 

 dictum that it was not native north of Cape Cod but was introduced there shortly- 

 prior to 1814; but although we find no definite record of tautog in the Gulf prior to 

 that date it seems to us far more likely that the anonymous writer who stated in 

 the Gloucester Telegraph of May 5, 1860, that tautog were plentiful many years 

 before and had merely reappeared there after a period of scarcity was correct, and 

 that this reappearance would have taken place in any event even if none had been 

 liberated north of Cape Cod. Apart from Mitchill's vague statement that by 1814 

 tautog had multiplied so that the Boston market then had a full supply (which may 

 have come from south and not north of Cape Cod, for all that is known to the 

 contrary) , the first positive record of a Massachusetts Bay specimen is of one caught 

 among the rocks ofi' Cohasset in 1824,*' which the local fishermen said was a species 

 new to them. By 1839, however, tautog were being caught in numbers in the inner 

 parts of Massachusetts Bay (e. g., Lynn, Nahant, Boston Harbor) ; they were more 

 abundant about Manomet Headland in Plymouth, and especially so at Wellfleet 

 where they already supported a considerable hook and line fishery. A few years 

 later the presence of this fish was established for the coast of Maine, and in 1851 it 

 was reported common in St. John Harbor, tributary to the Bay of Fundy. Accord- 

 ing to Perley, however, these Bay of Fundy fish were introduced — not native. 

 In 1876 the weirs north of Cape Cod took 2,274 pounds of tautog, and in 1879 Goode 

 and Beane described it as abundant in many localities about Cape Ann. 



At present, or within the last few years (for this fish fluctuates in abundance 

 from year to year), the regular range of the tautog includes the whole coast line 

 from Cape Cod to Cape Ann in suitable localities. North of this it is less regular, 

 less abundant, and more local, but there are some tautog grounds about the Isles of 

 Shoales, off Cape Porpoise, and about Casco Bay. We have also heard of tautog 

 as not uncommon along the ledges off Boothbay Harbor and in Penobscot Bay. 

 East of the latter the tautog is apparently unusual now, and it is so rare in the 

 Bay of Fundy (it has long since vanished from St. John Harbor) that Huntsman 

 learned of but one specimen taken within recent years. Cranberry Head, Nova 

 Scotia," is the most northerly record for the species. 



Being an extremely local fish, perhaps more so than any other Gulf of Maine 

 species interesting either to angler or to commercial fisherman, we would require a 

 local acquaintance far more detailed than we can boast to describe its precise haunts 

 along the whole coast of the Gulf. In Massachusetts Bay the more prolific tautog 

 grounds are, so far as we know, off Wellfleet, Sandwich, Manomet Headland, 

 Gurnet Point at Duxbury, Cohasset, Swampscott, Nahant, Marblehead, Magnolia, 

 and here and there along the rocky shores from Gloucester Harbor to Cape Ann. 

 Following are listed the returns from traps at various localities around Massachusetts 

 Bay for 1915 — a good tautog year. 



" Goode, et al., 18S4. 



<» Fowler, Proceedings, Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Vol. LXVII, 1915 (1916), p. 517, Philadelphia. 



