THE GAME FISHES OP THE WOELD 



■coloBTs which are often, as in the gray snapper, of the plainest 

 description. This radiant fish is the Lutianus griseus of the 

 scientist, the Pargo prieto of the Cuban, and plain snapper of 

 the Conch, the gray snapper of the angler merely because he 

 looks gray when compared to his twenty or more generic cousins. 

 In shallow water he is gray, adapting himself to the colour of the 

 mud or sand, but when in greater depths he comes up, if he 

 ■comes at all, brilliant in reddish-copper hues. The gray snapper 

 looks gray, but he is really green above ; the middle of each 

 scale is black, the edge white with dashes of colour here and 

 there, making it a fish that appeals to the artist. 



It has a high dorsal, a large powerful tail teUiag of fighting 

 spirit and the strength to back it up ; a gem-hke eye, and perfect 

 3)roportions. At first glance one would say the gray snapper is 

 a long, graceful, smaU-mouth black bass ; but it is more graceful, 

 more attractive, and with many times the strength and fight- 

 ing quality. The fish, doubtless, is found all over the West 

 Indies, and, where I have caught it on the Tortugas reefs, 

 is one of the cleverest of all fishes and the most difficult to 

 catch. 



On the large, growing, atoll-Uke key where I fished, a stranger 

 might have hunted for gray snappers a month, and never 

 iound them, as they rarely consorted with the brilliant host 

 that was foimd in the open. I knew an old wreck near Garden 

 Key ; what it was, or where it came from, no one knew. I found 

 it by accident at a very low tide, the entire skeleton of a big 

 «hip, blown in by a hurricane or wrecked by the old buccaneers. 

 As I peered down through the placid waters I saw, not ingots from 

 what might have been an old galleon, but scores of snappers, 

 hanging, poising in mid-water like birds. And such snappers ! 

 ranging from five to ten and doubtless twenty pounds. Their 

 dignity was their chief characteristic. Other fishes dashed 

 ■at the conch or mullet bait, but the gray snappers never moved ; 

 they did not deign even to look at it, and one might have fished 

 for them an eternity without success. 



:220 



