BEAUTY UNADORNED. 127 



A select family of the mackerel tribes, he is not yet fully un- 

 derstood by either amateurs or fishermen, and commands a 

 higher price than salmon in the markets. Apart from being 

 the greatest beauty that swims, he is undoubtedly the best 

 fish for the gridiron to be found in the waters of either hem- 

 isphere. 



THE SPANISH MACKEREL. 



My experience in trolling for the Spanish mackerel off the 

 inlets of Fire Island has convinced me that the fish is as nu- 

 merous as the bluefish, more so than the striped bass at cer- 

 tain seasons, and a little farther seaward than either of those 

 fishes. The striped bass is the fish which ventures nearest 

 shore ; the bluefish feeds in a range farther from shore, and 

 the Spanish mackerel feeds farther from shore than either, 

 except the large bluefish at the last of the season. Every 

 year the shoals of Spanish mackerel become more numerous, 

 and more are taken, but never in sufficient numbers to reduce 

 the average price below sixty cents per pound. 



The shoals which I saw, when last trolling for them, would 

 have formed an area of nearly five miles square, and still the 

 most successful boat did not take more than a dozen in three 

 days. He will not bite freely at any artificial lure, and 

 though numbers came near leaping on the deck of our yacht, 

 they treated our lures with an indifference which savored of 

 perverseness. " Oh !" thought I, " how I would like to be an- 

 chored in a small boat, and still-bait for you with a pearl 

 squid, a shiner, or a gar-eel !" But the difficulty was that 

 their favorite feeding-groUhds seemed to be just beyond the 

 verge of anchorage for a row-boat. This fish is eminently 

 shy of all kinds of nets, and, when a shoal is surrounded by a 



