Brsr ror Taste iw Octoser. 119 
The bluefish returns to our shores after its first voyage a 
two-pounder, being then one year old; and by autumn these 
eighteen-months’ old fish weigh from three to five pounds 
each ; but only those which weigh from five to fifteen pounds, 
with a semi-oecasional twenty-pounder, are regarded as good 
sport for the troll. These large ones are seldom taken in 
pounds or nets, for they can liberate themselves with their 
teeth from almost any net or pen not made of steel; but the 
younger shoals evince more prying curiosity, which leads 
many of them into nets fastened to ground fixtures in sufti- 
cient numbers to keep our markets supplied with them from 
June until November. 
But the midsummer bluefish, having recently spawned in 
our bays, are lean and dry food unless cooked within the same 
hour they are caught, when they are juicy and tender, but 
lack the rich sueculency of the October shoals. The bluefish 
taken in autumn is equally good as a broiler, or to bake or 
souse, so long as it can be kept sweet by the use of ice. This 
is the case with every branch of the mackerel family; and 
the bluefish of October, when canned in salt, is preferred by 
many to the common mackerel. Both the blucfish and mack- 
erel are in best condition from the middle of October until 
the tenth of November, when they begin to deteriorate and 
fall away to thinness, probably because the butter-fish and 
bay-shiners have settled away to hibernate, and the smelt and 
spearing have moved into brackish waters, leaving the blue- 
fish no alternative but to starve or move farther south, and 
within the influence of the Gulf Stream. 
It is well understood by amateurs and fishermen that the 
bluefish, like the prawn, visit our bays and estuaries period- 
ically, remaining sometimes only a season, and at other times 
several years. The present visit of the bluefish has been the 
longest one known to the oldest inhabitant of Long Island, 
having lasted twenty years. Every year since its present 
advent it has become more numerous and larger. In 1850, 
a ten-pound bluefish was a greater curiosity than is a twenty- 
