480 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



green, or dull blackish, with the sides irregularly 

 mottled or blotched with darker. These mottlings 

 are more evident in the young than in adults and 

 usually they are grouped as three pairs of more or 

 less continuous bars. Large fish are often almost 

 plain blackish. The belly is only slightly paler 

 than the sides, but the chin usually is white on 

 large ones, a very conspicuous character. Tautogs, 

 like cunners, vary greatly in color on different 

 bottoms, and also in their markings. 



Size. — Maximum length about 3 feet. The 22 }i 

 pounder, 36^ inches long, mentioned by Goode 93 

 as caught off New York in 1876 and preserved in 

 the United States National Museum, still remains 

 the heaviest fish recorded definitely. Fish of 

 more than 14 pounds are very rare, with 12- 

 pounders unusual. Tautog average about 2 to 4 

 pounds as they come to market. 



Habits. — The tautog is even more strictly a 

 coastwise fish than the cunner. Northward from 

 Cape Cod it is unusual to catch one more than 3 

 or 4 miles from the land, or deeper than, say 30-60 

 feet; we have never heard of one caught on a long 

 line set for cod or haddock, and they are unknown 

 on the offshore fishing banks. But they range 

 farther out and deeper to the southward, being one 

 of the commoner fishes caught in 10-13 fathoms 

 on the Cholera Bank, 10-12 sea miles offshore from 

 Long Island, and on Seventeen Fathom Bank, 8 

 miles off northern New Jersey. At the other ex- 

 treme, they follow the flood tide up above low- 

 water level around ledges, to prey on the abundant 

 supply of blue mussels along the intertidal zone, 

 dropping back into deeper water during the ebb. 

 We have helped to seine many small ones close 

 along the shore in only a few feet of water, at 

 Provincetown as well as southward, and it is not 

 unusual for tautog to run up into brackish water, 

 but we have never heard of them entering fresh 

 water. 



Their favorite haunts are along steep, rocky 

 shores; around breakwaters, offlying ledges and 

 submerged wrecks; around the piers and docks; 

 over boulder strewn bottoms; and on mussel beds. 

 In some places, however, good numbers are caught 

 on smooth bottom, far from any rocks (the eastern 

 side of Cape Cod Bay is an example, see p. 482). 

 And young fry, 2 to 4 inches long, are often seined 

 on sandy beaches. 94 



When tautog are not feeding they are likely to 

 gather in some hole or cleft among the rocks, where 

 they lie inert, on their sides, often several crowded 

 together, until the rising tide stirs them to activity 

 again. 95 And they are extremely local fish, per- 

 haps more so than any other Gulf of Maine species 

 that is interesting either to the angler or to the 

 commercial fisherman. 



While tautog are seldom seen before well into 

 April in any part of their geographic range, or 

 after November, they do not carry out any exten- 

 sive migrations with the seasons. At most, those 

 that find themselves in shoal water in autumn may 

 drop off into slightly deeper water, to spend the 

 cold season lying among eelgrass (Zostera), where 

 this has reestablished itself; in crevices among 

 rocks; or (in the case of the young ones) in empty 

 oyster and clam shells. They move and feed little 

 then, though they have been caught in lobster pots 

 there and on hook and line off Rhode Island. 96 



Tautog, like cunners (p. 475), are sometimes 

 chilled and killed if they are caught in shoal water 

 by a sudden cold snap, as happened along Rhode 

 Island and southern Massachusetts in 1841, 1857, 

 1875, 1901, and no doubt on many other occasions 

 that have not found their way into print or into 

 the records of the Bureau of Fisheries. 



Food. — Tautog feed on invertebrates, chiefly on 

 mollusks (both univalves and bivalves), especially 

 on mussels which are the chief diet of the tautog 

 living about ledges, and on barnacles that they 

 pick off the rocks. Crabs and hermit crabs are 

 favorite morsels. They also eat sand dollars, scal- 

 lops, amphipods, shrimps, isopods, and lobsters, 

 swallowing the smaller ones whole, but cracking 

 the larger with their crushing teeth (p. 479). A 

 tautog of about 2 pounds that we once caught off 

 Cohasset, Mass., had made a meal of gammarid 

 amphipods (sand fleas) gleaned from among the 

 rockweed with which the ledge was clothed, though 

 cunners caught at the same time and place were 

 full of barnacles. We think it likely that tautog 

 living in shallow bays (Duxbury, for example) prey 



•> American Fishes. 1888, p. 292. 



M We have seined tautog fry in such situations in localities as far apart as 

 Provincetown Harbor; Woods Hole, Cape Poge Bay. Marthas Vineyard, 

 and Cape Charles Beach, Va. And good numbers of larger tautog have been 

 reported as caught occasionally in nets in the vicinity of Provincetown; 8,700 

 pounds for example in 1898, and 5,800 pounds in 1899. 



« We have often observed this habit of theirs in the large live tank at the 

 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 



•■ Tautog have been described as burying in the mud, but we cannot vouch 

 for this. And we put no credence whatever in the old myth that the vent 

 of the tautog closes over in winter. 



