134 jFlSJfrES OF THE EAST ATLANTIC COAST. 



guasa GILL. This is a giant perch, 

 resembling in outline a much magnified tautog or blackfish. It 

 grows to the weight of five or six hundred pounds, and of course 

 ;it is only the smaller specimens that can be taken with rod and 

 ireel. I was once present at the capture of a young jewfish, weigh- 

 jing about twenty pounds, and it gave a fight of half an hour's du- 

 jration. When brought to table it proved to be a rich and well 

 liavored fish. 



It is a fish of great strength, and the large ones will break hooks 

 und lines which are large enough to capture good sized sharks; this 

 I have myself seen in the case of a shark hook one third of an inch 

 in diameter. I have myself hooked a large jewfish, how large 1 

 never knew ail 1 saw was the sweep of a huge tail a foot broad, 

 and away went my tackle. 



The jewfish has the habit of floating along on the surface with 

 he tide, apparently asleep, and it is then sometimes shot. One wa 

 killed in this way in Spruce Creek, a tributary of the Halifax River, 

 :i few years ago, by Mr. B. C. Pacetti, a fisherman of those regions 

 who supposed it to weigh 600 pounds, and he was familiar with this 

 fish, having captured many of them. He once fastened to a large 

 jewfish which he found floating near St. Augustine, and it towed 

 his boat off seawards till he was joined by several other fishing 

 boats, and among them they managed to capture it; when they #ot 

 it to town there were no scales in St. Augustine that could weigh 

 it whole, so they cut it up, and it weighed over 500 pounds. 



Even a specimen of that size is said to be good eating, so that 

 this species must furnish perhaps the largest of edible fishes. A 

 plaster cast of a jewfish weighing probably forty or fifty pounds, 

 was shown in the fisheries department of the Centennial Exhibition 

 in Philadelphia. 



How far north this species occurs I am unable to say, but it ap- 

 pears to be a stationary species, found on both coasts of Florida, 

 and abounding in tropical seas. Found in deep holes and channels 

 in the salt water sounds and inlets. Takes mullet bait. 



Jordan and Gilbert's synopsis describes only this one species of 

 PromocropSj as follows: Yellowish olivaceous, with numerous 



