338 Big Game Fishes 



fish a long, high dorsal, a ramlike " snout " ex- 

 tending beyond the mouth, and a faint idea of 

 this fish may be had by the reader who has not 

 seen it. My boatman announced it as "pizen," 

 and proposed to kill it on general principles ; but 

 so rare a foeman, so gallant a contestant, never 

 died by my hand unless it was strongly in de- 

 mand, and to Long John's wonderment I cut it 

 loose. In the years I spent on the reef I do not 

 think my catches of large parrot-fishes would 

 number over ten or twelve, and this was the larg- 

 est, though I saw a crudely mounted specimen in 

 a shop in Key West which must have weighed 

 over forty pounds; but such fish are the excep- 

 tion, a twenty-five-pound fish being moderately 

 rare, the average fish seen around the coral 

 heads near in ranging from five to eight pounds. 

 I unhesitatingly give the loro a place among the 

 hard-fighting game fishes of our tropical and 

 semi-tropical waters when taken with proper 

 tackle. 



This fish, known as the blue parrot-fish, loro, 

 and many local names, is the blue scarus (Scarus 

 coeruleus) of science. It has a wide geographical 

 range from the coast of South America to Mary- 

 land. On the reef the fishermen and boatmen 



