41 AMERICAN GAME FISHES. 



the sun-fishes Centrarchidce. 



Every boy east of the Rocky Mountains begins his career 

 as a real angler with the Sun-fish. He may have caught 

 Horned Dace or Shiners with an angle-worm on a crooked 

 pin, but to catch such fishes even the smallest boy knows is 

 not angling. He feels his first real angler's enthusiasm when, 

 seated on the projecting roots of the big sycamore tree, at 

 the "old swimming-hole," he sees this little strutting fish, 

 round as a dollar and resplendent in orange and green, trying 

 to keep off intruders from its nest of gravel and sand. He 

 throws his bait in the direction of the nest. The little fish 

 sees a new enemy and makes a quick rush at the bait. 

 The cork bobs excitedly. Excitement seizes the boy, and the 

 little fish is the first prize of the young angler. 



If he lives in the East or the North, the Sun-fish he takes 

 will be the old-fashioned Sunny or Pumpkin-seed, Lepomis 

 gibbosns, the brightest and most active of them all, although 

 not the largest. Should he live in the South-west, some of the 

 other species will fall to his lot; but all the genuine Sun-fishes 

 stand in the same relation to their friend, the boy. Let me 

 quote from Professor Goode's admirable account of the 

 Youthful Fisherman: 



"The 'Pumpkin seed' and the Perch are the first trophies 

 of the boy-angler. Many are the memories of truant days 

 dreamed away by pond or brook-side, with twine, pole and 

 pin-hook, and of the slow homeward trudge, doubtful what 

 his reception will be at home; pole gone, line broken, hook 

 lost, the only remnant of the morning's glory a score of lean, 

 sun-dried Perches and Sunnies, and, mayhap, a few Eels and 

 Bull-heads, ignominiously strung through the gills upon a 

 willow withe, and trailing, sometimes dropping from weary 

 hands, in the roadside dust. 



"Then in later youth came the excursion to some distant 

 pond; the early start, long before sunrise, the cane-rods trailing 

 over the tail-board of the wagon, the long drive between 



