EASTE'RiV COAST FISHES. 253 



White 'P^-RCH.—iMorone aiitcricana. — Gill. 



This salt water fish affords most excellent sport. [See South- 

 ern Coast Fishes.] 



THE POMATOMID^. 



V>\M^v\ZYi.—Poniato)nussaltatrix.—G\\\. 



This fish is known as the bluefish in New York, New Jersey, 

 and New England, except in Rhode Island, where it is recognized 

 by the name of horse mackerel. On some parts of the New Jersey 

 coast it is also called the horse mackerel. Form of body oblong, 

 head rather large, snout rounded, mouth large, armed with long 

 sharp teeth ; tail deeply forked ; color brilliant steel blue and silver 

 in the young fish, and deep greenish blue in the old fish ; fins 

 yellowish. 



The blue fish is a pelagic or wandering fish, passing its winters 

 in the South, and its summers in the North. In March and April 

 they are found off the Carolina coast. About the twentieth of May 

 they make their appearance off the coast of New Jersey. Barne- 

 gat is a favorite ground for them, where set nets have taken as 

 many as six thousand in a single day. Very often vast schools are 

 driven upon the beach by porpoises and other large feeders, where 

 they have been gathered up by the cartload with pitchforks, bas- 

 kets, etc. Other schools have chased the shiners, moss-bunkers, 

 sardines and anchovies upon which they principally feed, close in 

 shore, and have been jigged from the surface by the hundreds. 

 The May fish range from two to twelve pounds in weight, are poor 

 in flesh, and ravenous as sharks. In June they are found equally 

 abundant off and in Fire Island Inlet, and in a few days thereafter 

 are scattered off Montauk Point, the east end of Long Island, Shag- 

 wauna reef and other reefs adjacent. By or near the twentieth of 

 June, depending something upon the forwardness of the season, 

 they have spread themselves over the reefs of New London and to 

 the eastward, on ta Block Island, and thence through Fisher's Isl- 

 and Sound. By the twentieth of August they are in plentiful sup- 

 ply all through, inside and outside of Vineyard Sound, Nantucket, 

 etc. They have gained flesh, and become quite palatable. The 



