200 



THE SHEEPSHEAD. 



in Flatlands bay, some years since, and when he had fairly 

 exhausted his strength by long and careful skill, and was 

 reeling him towards the boat, on the surface of the water. 

 lost his noble prize by the rapacity of a villanous shark, who 

 seized the fish, and broke away with part of the line. In the 

 evening of the same day, some net fishermen were hauling 

 the seine on a neighboring beach, and captured the piratical 

 monster; and on opening him, the sheepshead was found in 

 his stomach, partly digested, with my friend's hook in his 

 jaw." 



The Buffalo correspondent remarks, of the fresh and salt 

 water sheepshead — 



" This is a villain in general estimation — the pest of the 

 fisher for basse — a fish that putteth the cook, who would ren- 

 der him acceptable at table, in a quandary — from which, I 

 am sorry to say, I cannot relieve her, though she be at her 

 wit's end. 



" He is generally brown, gray or reddish above, and of a 

 dead, impure white below. His head is large, and his body 

 is flattened latterly, though the frying-pan rejecteth him. 

 His ordinary weight is two or three pounds, though he some- 

 times weighs five, and even six. His food, his haunts, his 

 habits, are similar to those of the black basse, whom he ever 

 accompanieth — as though he were intended by nature as a 

 foil to set off the merits of that jewel of the flood. He is 

 despised, yea detested by the choleric angler — who pulls 

 him out, and then dasheth him upon the stones. 



" The sheepshead of the sea is a lusty, crafty fish, bepraised 

 alike by the fisherman and the epicure. At the turn of the 

 tide, he takes the whole soft clam on your hook at a mouth- 

 ful, and chews it shell and all, and pulls like a salmon as yon 

 draw him in ; and his radiant, deep, and broad-barred sides, 

 as he flaps about on the sand of that low islet in the Great 

 South bay of Long Island, to which ycu tai^e just hauled 



