296 Big Game Fishes 
vation. The bonito is eaten on the California 
coast, but the flesh is coarse and very different 
from that of the delicious Spanish mackerel. It 
is well to remember, however, that there is only 
one cook in a thousand who understands how to 
cook a fish. In point of fact, every fish is a gas- 
tronomic study by itself; some should be eaten im- 
mediately after the catch, and this is particularly 
true of the mackerel tribe, —always excepting 
the salt mackerel of Marc Antony, which, we are 
assured by Plutarch, constitutes the theme for his 
true fish story, involving the caprice of Cleopatra. 
How many anglers have played this same joke 
on an unsuspecting friend! And lest there be 
some son of Ananias who claims it as new, the 
story may be recalled. It seems that Antony and 
Cleopatra, according to veracious Plutarch, were 
fishing, probably in the Nile; and wishing to 
make the noble Antony a victim to her wit, she 
instructed a slave to slip over and dive down and 
fasten upon his hook a dried salt fish, supposed 
to be a mackerel. The slave obeyed, and when 
the act was accomplished, gave the line a vigor- 
ous jerk, holding on while Antony tugged and 
played, until the slave lost his breath, then landed 
the salted and ancient fish. At this point the 
