Striped Bass ; Rockfish ; Rock 



and will rise to the fly. Thaddeus Norris tells about fly-fishing for 

 the white bass many years ago with a young army officer near Detroit. 

 They met with indifferent success until they tried the mouth of a small 

 creek on the Canadian side, where they caught 2s fish in a short time. 

 They later discovered they had been fishing in preserved waters. 

 The Canadian owner of the land through which the creek flowed was 

 in the habit of seining the fish out of the river and retaining them in 

 the creek (across the mouth of which he had placed netting) until the 

 market price was high enough to please him. 



Body rather deep and compressed, the back considerably arched; 

 head subconical, slightly depressed at the nape; mouth moderate, 

 nearly horizontal, the lower jaw little projecting; maxillary reaching 

 middle of pupil, 2| in head; teeth on base of tongue in a single patch, 

 a patch also on each side of tongue ; margin of subopercle with a deep 

 notch; head scaled to between the nostrils; preopercular serrse feeble, 

 strongest at the angle; gill-rakers rather long and slender, as long as 

 the gill-fringes; longest dorsal spine 2 in head; anal spines graduated, 

 the second \ length of head; middle caudal rays if in outer. 



Colour, silvery, tinged with golden below; sides with narrow 

 dusky lines, about 5 above the lateral line, i along it, and a variable 

 number below it, these sometimes more or less interrupted or trans- 



posed. 



Striped Bass; Rockfish; Rock 



Rocais lineatus (Bloch) 



" The stately Bass, old Neptune's fleeting Post 

 That tides it out and in from sea to coast." 



— IVood, New England's Prospect (1634). 



The striped bass occurs on our Atlantic coast north to the St. 

 Lawrence River and south to the Escambia River in western Florida. 



373 



