292 Big Game Fishes 
spots, seemed more beautiful than any I had pre- 
viously caught; and when my professional com- 
panion came ashore with sixty to salt down, the 
homely boat fairly glowed with the golden glint 
reflected from the brilliant throng. 
The Spanish mackerel has a wide range from 
Brazil to Gloucester and on the Pacific Coast of 
America, everywhere held in high esteem as the 
finest of table fishes. It is usually caught by troll- 
ing, and is essentially a surface fish. Its schedule 
of migration may be considered as follows: It 
arrives off the western Florida coast in March and 
reaches North Carolina about the same time. In 
May I have taken them off the rip-raps, at the 
entrance to the Chesapeake, and large quantities 
are taken on the Eastern shores. The movement 
is northward, and by July they appear in the 
waters about New York, moving slowly up the 
coast, everywhere in demand. Mr. Earll states 
in his exhaustive monograph on this fish that it 
spawns near Sandy Hook, in Chesapeake Bay, and 
in Pamlico Sound, beginning in April in the latter 
and ending in August in the former. The eggs 
of a six-pound fish he estimates equal 1,500,000. 
As soon as cool weather approaches in the fall the 
Spanish mackerel moves, and by October it has 
