188 Big Game Fishes 
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 Sczenops, and that it is known among all 
nations as Sczenops 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 
