Members or tHE Hanp-Linn-comrrer. 113 
comes the arbiter in all piscatorial disputes, as well as the 
counselor in all arrangements of fishing-tackle, until some 
other boy takes a larger fish. 
But the blackfish, or tautog, is not to be disdained by the 
disciple of rod and reel. Though he is eminently a commer- 
cial fish, yet a tide-runner of his family which weighs from 
eight to twelve pounds makes such dips and runs as try both 
the angler and his tackle. A somewhat celebrated senator 
of Rhode Island (now the Chinese embassador) used annual- 
ly to spend several summer weeks in fishing for tautog with 
an artistically-rigged hand-line. He sculled his boat to the 
edge of the tide, on the bank between a rapid current and 
nearly slack water, and near an islet or reef of rocks in the 
Seconnet River, where the water is about fifteen feet deep; 
anchored his punt firmly, standing up in the stern, and cast 
some seventy-five feet of line, armed with two hooks about 
two feet above the sinker, and baited with clam. In this 
way Ihave known him to take one hundred pounds of tau- 
tog in one hour. 
At the mouth of the Seconnet River there are numerous 
pounds, built of stone, or staked out with netting, for the 
purpose of catching tautog, porgee—or scapogue, as the 
large ones are ealled—and numerous minor bottom fry. Re- 
cently a salmon was caught in one of these infamous traps, 
and, if it is seriously contemplated to restore salmon to our 
deserted rivers, the first step should be to take up all nets 
fastened to stakes in the rivers and along the coast. 
Tautog are eaten while fresh, Neither the tautog or any 
other fish of the estuaries which is angled for are cured by 
salt or refrigeration. They are, as it were, hand-to-mouth 
fishes. Both the tautog and sea bass are kept alive many 
days, and sometimes weeks, in fish-cars anchored in water 
suited to their growth, The blackfish is next to the shad in 
affording the greatest amount of estuary fish to our markets. 
Its meat is watery, and the scales are so firmly set that some 
persons invariably lave them in vinegar before scaling. In 
H 
