BEST FOK TABLE IN OCTOBER. 119 



The bluefish returns to our shores after its first voyage a 

 two-pounder, being then one year old ; and by autumn these 

 eighteen-months' old fish weigh from three to five pounds 

 each ; but only those which weigh from five to fifteen pounds, 

 with a semi-occasional twenty-pounder, are regarded as good 

 sport for the troll. These large ones are seldom taken in 

 pounds or nets, for they can liberate themselves with their 

 teeth from almost any net or pen not made of steel ; but the 

 younger shoals evince more prying curiosity, which leads 

 many of them into nets fastened to ground fixtures in suffi- 

 cient numbers to keep our markets supplied with them from 

 June until November. 



But the midsummer bluefish, having recently spawned in 

 our bays, are lean and dry food unless cooked within the same 

 hour they are caught, when they are juicy and tender, but 

 lack the rich succulency of the October shoals. The bluefish 

 taken in autumn is equally good as a broiler, or to bake or 

 souse, so long as it can be kept sweet by the use of ice. This 

 is the case with every branch of the mackerel family ; and 

 the bluefish of October, when canned in salt, is preferred by 

 many to the common mackerel. Both the bluefish and mack- 

 erel are in best condition from the middle of October until 

 the tenth of November, when they begin to deteriorate and 

 fall away to thinness, probably because the butter-fish and 

 bay-shiners have settled away to hibernate, and the smelt and 

 spearing have moved into brackish waters, leaving the blue- 

 fish no alternative but to starve or move farther south, and 

 within the influence of the Gulf Stream. 



It is well understood by amateurs and fishermen that the 

 bluefish, like the prawn, visit our bays and estuaries period- 

 ically, remaining sometimes only a season, and at other times 

 several years. The present visit of the bluefish has been the 

 longest one known to the oldest inhabitant of Long Island, 

 having lasted twenty years. Every year since its present 

 advent it has become more numerous and larger. In 1850, 

 a ten-pound bluefish was a greater curiosity than is a twenty- 



