376 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



only about two and one-half times as long as 

 deep, but with caudal peduncle as slender as that 

 of a mackerel), and to its blunt head. 



Color. — Greenish or greenish bronze above with 

 golden sides; silvery below, sometimes with yellow 

 blotches. There is a large black blotch on the gill 

 cover, a fainter dark spot on the lower rays of the 

 pectorals (in adults), and a black blotch in their 

 axils. The fins are more or less yellowish; the edge 

 of the dorsals is black. Very young fish have 5 or 

 6 dark cross-bars. 



Size. — Maximum recorded weight 36 pounds. 



General range. — Warm seas; abundant on both 

 coasts of America; northward as a stray to the 

 outer coast of Nova Scotia; 66 also among the 

 East Indies. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — -We know of 

 only two records of this southern fish from our 

 Gulf, one specimen picked up on Lynn Beach on 

 the shore of Massachusetts Bay during the sum- 

 mer of 1847, and a second taken at Provincetown 

 in 1933. 66 But it is a regular summer visitor at 

 Woods Hole though it is not common there. 



Commercial importance. — A famous game fish, 

 but of minor commercial importance. 



Hardtail Caranx crysos (Mitchill) 1815 



Yellow jack; Runner; Yellow mackerel 



Jordan and Evermann, 1896-1900, p. 921. 



Description. — The hardtail resembles the cre- 

 valle, saurel, and goggle-eyed scad in the rel- 



•* Reported near Halifax, Nova Scotia, by Vladykov (Proc. Nova Scotian 

 Inst. Sci., vol. 19, 1935, p. 4). 

 " Reported by MacCoy, Bull. 70, Boston Soc. Nat. History, 1934, p. 6. 



ative sizes and arrangement of its fins, in its deeply 

 forked tail, in its slender caudal peduncle and in 

 the presence of a row of bony shields along at least 

 the rear part of its lateral line. But its scaly 

 breast, the lack of canine teeth in its lower jaw, 

 and the lack of a black spot on the pectoral fin 

 separates it from the first of these; the fact that 

 the bony plates increase in size, passing rearward 

 along the lateral line, marks it off from the saurel, 

 and its strongly arched lateral line from the goggle 

 eye. Its first dorsal fin has 8 spines, its second, 

 one spine followed by 23 to 25 rays, while its anal 

 consists of a finlet of 2 short spines followed, after 

 a distinct gap, by the soft portion with 19 to 21 

 rays. 



Color. — Greenish bronze above, golden or silvery 

 below. The fins may show dusky cloudings, and 

 there usually is a dark spot on the gill cover, near 

 the margin, but none on the pectoral fin. Young 

 fry are more or less distinctly cross-barred on the 

 sides, but these bars disappear with growth. 



Size. — Maximum weight about 4 pounds and 

 length about 22 inches. Northern examples are 

 seldom more than a foot long. 



General range. — Atlantic coast of America, 

 Brazil to Rhode Island and to Nantucket Sound 

 regularly, and as far northward as outer Nova 

 Scotia as a stray; represented by a closely allied 

 species in the Pacific. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — The fact that 

 this fish has been reported at Chatham on Cape 

 Cod in 1933, 67 at Provincetown, in Boston Harbor, 



« MacCoy, Bull. 70, Boston Soc. Nat. History, 1934, p. 6. 



Figure 201. — Hardtail (Caranx crysos). Woods Hole. From Goode. Drawing by H. L. Todd. 



