Beauty Unapornep. 127 
A select family of the mackerel tribes, he isnot yet fully un- 
derstood by either amateurs or fishermen, and commands a 
higher price than salmon in the markets. Apart from being 
the greatest beauty that swims, he is undoubtedly the best 
tish for the gridiron to be found in the waters of cither hem- 
isphere. 
THe Spanish MAckKeEReEL. 
My experience in trolling for the Spanish mackerel off the 
inlets of Fire Island has convinced me that the fish is as nu- 
merous as the bluefish, more so than the striped bass at cer- 
tain seasons, and a little farther seaward than either of those 
fishes. The striped bass is the fish which ventures nearest 
shore; the bluefish feeds in a range farther from shore, and 
the Spanish mackerel feeds farther from shore than either, 
except the large bluefish at the last of the season. Every 
year the shoals of Spanish mackerel become more numerous, 
and more are taken, but never in sufticient numbers to reduce 
the average price below sixty cents per pound. 
The shoals which I saw, when last trolling for them, would 
have formed an area of nearly five miles square, and still the 
most successful boat did not take more than a dozen in three 
days. He will not bite freely at any artificial Iure, and 
though numbers came near leaping on the deck of our yacht, 
they treated our lures with an indifference which savored of 
perverseness. “Oh!” thought I, “how I would like to be an- 
chored in a small boat, and still-bait for you with a pearl 
squid, a shiner, or a gar-eel!” But the difficulty was that 
their favorite feeding-grounds seemed to be just beyond the 
verge of anchorage for a row-boat. This fish is eminently 
shy of all kinds of nets, and, when a shoal is surrounded by a 
