1 88 Big Game Fishes 



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two will at once be apparent. To land a twenty- 

 pound yellowtail with a long salmon rod would 

 be a matter of hours, at least such was the opinion 

 confided to me by an old fisherman after a day's 

 yellowtail fishing in California. Laymen are 

 prone to scoff at the technical names of fishes. 

 They care little that the channel-bass is of the 

 genus Scicznops, and that it is known among all 

 nations as Scicznops ocellatus, the latter term 

 referring to the spots near the tail. The actual 

 necessity of this common language name is 

 emphasized in this fish, which has so many titles, 

 local names from Virginia to Texas, that the 

 would-be historian of the fish is amazed, and the 

 travelling angler more so. Where I caught 

 the fish at the mouth of the James River, the 

 dug-out fishermen, who cruised around the oyster 

 beds in their rakish crafts, called the fish the 

 drum, and I at first supposed they meant the big 

 drum, the bass drummer of the finny tribe. 



At the mouth of the St. Marys, Georgia, my 

 boatman, who was a city father of a neighboring 

 commonwealth, took me " red-bass " fishing. The 

 boy who collected fiddlers for me in the swamp 

 on the way to Fort Marion, Florida, confided to 

 me the best " spotted-bass " fishing-ground in the 



