The River Perch 



the upper Missouri basin is found the subspecies boreum, differing only 

 in the more slender head. 



The sauger is a much smaller fish than the wall-eyed pike, its 

 length seldom exceeding a foot or 18 inches and its weight a pound or 

 two. It is on this account much less important as a food-fish than the 

 wall-eye. Nor is it much valued as a game-fish, except, perhaps, in 

 the Mississippi Valley, where it is frequently taken by casting and 

 sometimes by trolling. 



A few years ago the sauger was, to the few elect who knew 

 where to find it, the choicest game-fish of the lower Wabash River; 

 and we knew a minister who always went "saugering" when he 

 failed in other ways to get the proper inspiration for his next Sunday's 

 sermon. Starting in at the Vandalia bridge, he would direct his oars- 

 man to, get out into the current, then row slowly up stream, even 

 to old Fort Harrison and beyond, perhaps to Durkee's Ferry; then, 

 turning, slowly drift with the current home again. Meanwhile, with 

 a small, silvery minnow (a satin-fin, creek chub, or river chub) at the 

 end of 50 feet of line, trolling through the quiet ripples and over the 

 deep pools, he patiently waits for the sauger's strike; and, while wait- 

 ing, his eyes take in the beauties of the river, the shore, and the sky; 

 ideas come readily, his thoughts fall together in logical sequence, and 

 when Sunday comes, the sermon that he preaches is filled with sun- 

 shine, and love, and faith in humanity; and his flock know that their 

 pastor has spent a day upon the river. 



The sauger can be easily distinguished from the wall-eyed pike by 

 its having 4 to 7 pyloric coeca of unequal length. Colour, olive-gray, 

 sides brassy or orange, with dark mottlings, most distinct in the young, 

 which are sharply marked; first dorsal with 2 or 3 rows of round 

 black spots, but no black blotch on last spines; second dorsal with 3 

 irregular rows of dark spots; a large black blotch on base of pectoral; 

 caudal dusky and yellowish. 



GENUS TERCA LINN^US 



The River Perch 



Body oblong, somewhat compressed, the back elevated; cheeks 

 scaly, opercles mostly naked, the opercle armed with a single spine; 

 preopercle and shoulder-girdle serrated, the former with retrorse, 

 hooked serrations below; premaxillaries protractile: teeth in villiform 



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