CHAPTER XXV 



THE CHANNEL-BASS, BLUEFISH AND 

 STRIPED BASS 



' And, as he darts, the waters blue 

 Are streaked with gleams of many a hue. 

 Green, orange, purple and gold.' 



SOME fishes suggest calm and gentle waters, caves of the deep 

 ever undistTirbed, where the kelp lazily sways to and fro in 

 tideless seas, and the shades of carrageen scintillate in iridescent 

 glories ; others again tell of fierce seas, of deep-blue waters, of 

 rushing foam and spoondrift, of excitement and the quick high 

 pulse. Here we find the bluefish, a dashing cavalier of the sea, 

 to be found a mile or two off the surf in iN'ew England, while the 

 striped-bass are brousing alongshore and rushing into the back 

 water to seize luckless prey — crab, lobster, octopus, or any- 

 thing else. The bluefish, channel-bass and striped-bass are the 

 swaggering muskateers of the sea, and the bluefish is the piscatorial 

 D'Artagnan, a born fighter, who fights and destroys for the very 

 love of it. The late Professor Spencer F. Baird, said : ' There is no 

 parallel in point of destructiveness to the bluefish among the 

 marine species of our coast.' When the bluefish sweeps north 

 out of the unknown and mysterious winter-land of many fishes, 

 it is a marauding army, 



I once was trying to find a school of tuna off the Atlantic 

 coast of America, near Boon Island Light, on the coast of 

 Maine. My boatman fished for cod and halibut, and I with a rod 

 for tuna, which never came. At times he would take cod and 

 haddock as fast as he could haul them in ; but one day, in the 

 very vortex of a fishing frenzy, when he bid fair to fill the boat, 

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