Sept. 10, 1891,]5 



FOREST AND STREAM 



14 7 



"That reminds me." 



A CONTRIBUTOR writes of one of the characters en- 

 countpred on the waj : 

 ' But the driver bafllss dctcription. He was Yankee, 

 I stage drivi^r, Young America, and prcifeesor of modern 

 ) profanity, compressed into Bft. of sLurdj^ independence. 

 Finally, with a view to his moral culture, we offered him 

 fifty cents to omit further profanity till we reached the 

 end of the route. He accepted the offer with accompany- 

 ing weight of self-control and went bravely along a few 

 miles in unaccustomed silence, broken only by a few 

 I hesitating reuiarl^s about the weather and such subjects 

 , as could be touched upon without the aid of supeilutive 

 i' Eaglish. The story of a hound running so fast that he 

 I split and passed through a sapling with only tbe loss of 

 1 his tail, was, however, too much for the boy's credulity, 

 ! and \inder the excitement of intense scepticism he 8ai<l. 

 * "The hound must have been d — thin." This lopsis linguce 

 cost him fifty C8nt.=i, and made him so careful that we 

 owed bim thirty-6ve cents at our destination, where we 

 arrived late in the afternoon. On the ride this irrepres- 

 sible took gi-pat delight in a borrowed pipe, and frankly 

 asked that it be given to him; a tobacco pouch much 

 valaqd for its age he also courted, and when told that the 

 ! owner had it twelve yeare, said, '-You must be tired of it 

 now.'" 



Ever aee a grizzlv? I guess 1 did. 



In the spring of '55 I left Coloma after nighcfall, bound 

 for Frisco. I had a couple of pounds or so of yellow stuff 

 in a slim buckskin bag fastened round my waist next the 

 skin. My plan was to walk as far as Folsom that night 

 and take the morning stage. I started at that unseemly 

 hour because I wanted to get away unnoticed. 



It was a clear starlit night. Starlight in California usu- 

 ally does not mean much. But I was familiar with the 

 way. As usual a stiff breeze was blowing coastward 

 from the snow-capped Sierras behind me. The country — 

 I kept some distance back from the river — is decidedly 

 rolling, not to say hilly, covered for the moat part with 

 tall grass, and thickly decked with yellow flowers. 

 Clunaps of chapparal abounded, and here and there a 

 1 hve oak or pecan tree studded the landscape. It was 

 I early in the season, but already the grass was dry enough 

 to rustle under foot. 

 I had completed fully three-fourths of the .iourney. In 

 I jjassing out from under a live oak, where the trail led 

 . through a sort of grove, I found my path disputed by a 

 huge animal, that, with a horrible roar, rose on his fore- 

 legs a few paces in front. The sight and sound fairly 

 paralyzed me, but as soon as I could move I wheeled and 

 made' for the trfe. Catching sight of a limb outlined 

 against the sky, I threw away my gun and sprang for it. 

 To my after astonishment I reached my mark, and lost 

 no time in getting among the branches. 



No Jack put in an appearance, so I concluded the 

 animal was badly wounded. I tried to locate my gun, 

 but failed. There was nothing for it but to wait till 

 morning, when I hoped to be able to fish up mv gun and 

 settle with the mountaineer. I found a tolerably com- 

 fortable poaitioLi and — woke up on the ground. Day 

 had broken. I was considerably dazed. Nevertheless, I 

 distinguished an unforgetable sound in my ears. I 

 scrambled to my feet, and, hastily entertaining the notion 

 that I wanted to get up a tree, I dashed for a young 

 pecan close at hand. In the act of climbing I glanced 

 over my shoulder, and about 50yds. off I discovered the 

 familiar form of an old wind-broken mule that had been 

 turned out to die. The joke was immense. I grimly 

 sought my gun and leveled it at the brute's head. His 

 innocent gaza disconcerted me. After a moment's reflec- 

 tion, I threw the gun on my shoulder and went my way. 



Yes, I once saw a grizzly. Two hunters killed him up 

 in the mountains near Lake Tahoe. I saw his body on a 

 wagon at Coloma. H. 



$^ dtjd ^ivift fishing. 



The TtfLL TEXTS of the game fish laws of all the States, 

 Territories and British Provinces are given in the Book o1 

 Jjlie Game Laws. 



THE BLUEFISH. 



tpROM Nova Scotia to New Jersey the well established 

 name of a popular and abundant fish is the one 

 given as the title uf this paper. Bluefish is now the ac- 

 ceptPd designation of thp same species in the G-ulf of 

 Mexico, by transfer from New England. An old Ameri- 

 can nacne for the fish is tkipjack, which lias found its 

 way into European books on hshes, and is paraphraspd in 

 scientific literature under the guise of the Latin saltator 

 or saltatrix, a leaper. Rhode Island folk of the olden 

 times called the bluefish a horse mackerel, doubtless on 

 acooimt of a superficial resemblance to certain members 

 of the mackerel family. In some other portions of New 

 England it is the snapping mackerel or snapper, a term 

 adopted also in New Jersey, and often abbreviated into 

 snap mackerel and even mackerel. At New Bedford, 

 Mass.. the fish is sometimes called blue snapper. An old 

 New York name is skip mackerel, and on the Hudson 

 the misnomer whitefish is sometimes heard. Maryland, 

 Virginia and North Cai-olina use the name greenfish. A 

 correspondent last fall wrote me that ''the name green- 

 fish is universally applied to the bluefish in the fishing 

 centers on Herring Bay, below Annapolis, Ind." Another 

 term applied to the species in Chesapeake Bay and gen- 

 erally known in the markets of Baltimore and Washing- 

 ton, is tailor, or salt-water tailor, the latter to distinguish 

 it from the fresh-water tailor, which is the hickory shad 

 (Clupea niediocris). The old name skipj ick is now best 

 roottrd in the region south of Cape Hatteras, but the over- 

 powering iafluence of an aggressive fishery is rapidly 

 estaldishing the term bluefish from Nova Scotia to 

 Florida. 



RelatioHshvps.-~The bluefish is not one of the macker- 

 els, but is the sole representative of a family which is 

 now placed near to that containing the pilot fishes, cre- 

 Valles, pompanos, amber fishes, etc. The butterfish, or 

 -barvestfish, and the rudderfish are relatives of the blute- 



flsh, although much smaller. Pomatomus saltatrix is the 

 only sijecies recognized at present over the wide range of 

 this piratical voyager: but a casual examination of a 

 specimen of the South African form gives the impression 

 that it is shorter and stouter than the average American 

 fish. We must, however, expect consideral)le variation 

 in a spf cies of such extensive range. 



Distribution. — On the North American coast the blue- 

 fish ranges from Nova Scotia, where it is not a regular 

 visitor, to central Brazil. In the Mediterranean the fish 

 is well known, especially on the shores of Morocco. A 

 series of interesting articles on the Morocco bluefish, 

 written by "Sucelle," was published in 1888 and 1889 by 

 the London Field. In South Africa the species is abund- 

 ant and thrifty, as well as in the seas of India and Aus- 

 tralia. A singular fact in its distribution, noted hy Dr. 

 Goode, is its absence from the Bermudas and the Western 

 Islands: it is unknown on the Atlantic coast of Europe 

 also. Temperature is one of the chief factors in the dis- 

 tribution of the bluefish. The scarcity of the .species in 

 Buzzard's Bay about the middle of July caused anglers 

 great uneasiness, and it made the fishing season so far a 

 very short one. The reason of this was to be found in 

 the'condition of the water, which was too cold to suit 

 the fastidious ta-.te of the bluefish, although one of iheir 

 favorite food species — the sea herring — was abundant. 

 Last year the water was favorable and bluefish swarmed 

 along the c )ast f i-oni Long Island Sound to Monhegan in 

 Maine. Buzzard's Biy vvas full of them. In Cape Cod 

 Biy, at the close of July, 1890, the fish were more abund- 

 ant than for many years before. A .^ummpr temperature 

 of 60 to 75° is grateful to the bluefish, and it is believed 

 that 40" is about the limit of cold which it will endure. 



Size. — It is i-ecorded that in the last century this flsh 

 sometimes reached a vveight of 40 or oOlbs. in Vineyard 

 Sound; perhaps this is true, but our ancestors were good 

 fishermen and left none of the big ones for their children. 

 The largest specimen of recent times was mentioned in 

 Forest and Stream, June, 1ST4; it weighed 25lb3.. and 

 was CHptured with rod and reel by L. Hathaway, Esq., 

 from the bridge at Cohasset Narrows, Mass. A friend of 

 the writer is authority for the statement that 25-pounders 

 were not uncommon on the North Carolina coast in 1888, 

 This, however, is far above the average size of the fall 

 run of fish. In the fall of 1888 a considerable number of 

 bluefish weighing I51bj. were noted on the New Jersey 

 coast, but it was the first run of the size for many years. 

 Last year the number of large fish from the Capes of Vir- 

 ginia" to Rhode Island was remarkable. In the L )wpr 

 Chesapeake big bluefis'n wern extremely and unusually 

 abundant during June. During the present summer 

 my observations have been confined mamlv to Vineyard 

 Sound and the waters southward to the Chesapeake; in 

 this area I have not heard of a bluefish above lOlbs. in 

 vveight. and the usual run includes chiefly Ash of 4 to 

 Gibs.; later in the season we will again learn of larger in- 

 dividuals, fattened upon the herring and silversides 

 which swarm in all our shallow bays. 



Abundance. — The early history of the bluefish on our 

 coast is somewhat obscure. Josselyn (11)72) mentioned a 

 "blew fish'" or "horse"' among the food fishes of New 

 England; but he catalogued two kinds of bluefish, one of 

 which was speckled. This may as well have been one of 

 the seafishes of Maine (Anarrhichas minor) as any other 

 species, and to this the name hound would be more ap- 

 propriate than to the bluefish. The "blew houndflsh'" of 

 Maine waters might have been Anarrh idias lupus, which 

 is now" present and is by some persons "esteempd the 

 bast sort of fish next to rock cod." From 1659 to 1763 the 

 fish were recorded as plentiful about Nantucket during 

 the sumrapr, but m 1764 they disappeared suddenly. 

 About 1791 the species was abundant in Florida and 

 apparently abient from New York. DeKay states that it 

 was unknown on that coast until about 1810, when a few 

 appeared. In 1815, according to Dr. Mitchill, the young 

 were taken plentifully from New York wharves in 

 Atigust: the largest one mentioned by that author was 

 13m. long and weighed about 14oz. In 1835 the abund- 

 ance of bluefish in the region was noteworthy and in 

 1841 Vineyard Sound became the center of a great fish- 

 ery. In 1837 the fish advanced northward to Cape Cod 

 and ten year's later to Cape Ann. From that time until 

 recent years the species has fluctuated greatly in num- 

 bers and varied in the time of its arrival in a given 

 locality. Oft' the northern coast of North Carolina for 

 many years prior to 1877 there was a great fall and win- 

 ter fishery for bluefish averaging over lOlbs. in weight. 

 Gradually the fish came later and later until in 1876 they 

 appeared at Christmas and in 1877 they failed to come 

 and were not seen again until March of 1888, when they 

 reappeared in vast numbers. For the last five years there 

 has been no lack of bluefish, but the centers of abund- 

 ance have varied. In 1»86 the fish were more abundant 

 at Sr-abright, N. J., than anywhere to the southward. In 

 1887 a very active fishery was located off Block Island. 

 In 1888 Chesapeake Bay' contained such an abundance of 

 the fish that hauls of 17,000 and 25,000 were reported. 

 Last year was a year of plenty and the distribution ex- 

 tended from the Chesapeake to Maine. Buzzard's Bay 

 was another favorite locality for bluefidi in 1890 and the 

 number around Cape Cod was greater than for many 

 years; schools estimated to contain 1,000 barrels of fish 

 were notpd off the coast. 



Hahits.— The bluefish is a pelagic species and migratory 

 in its habits. It comes along the coa'^t apparently from 

 the southward, arriving off New Jersey usually about the 

 middle of May, but sometimes a montli later, and reaches 

 Cape Cod sometimes in July. Its time of leaving the 

 coast depends upon the temperature of the water and the 

 supply of food. The date on the New Jersey coast in 

 1885 was Sept. 15, and in 1886 a month later. Further 

 south the time of arrival is, of course, much earlier. 

 Last year the species appeared opposite Roanoke Island 

 in vast numbers in March. 



This is one of the most destructive of all fish. It fol- 

 lows schools of alewives, weakfish, mullet, mackerel, 

 scup, butterfish, and other valuable food fishes along the 

 coast in summer, and in our shallow bays and sounds 

 the young feed upon silversides, young herring, an- 

 chovies and other small fishes. The menhaden, ale wife 

 and shad have been driven far up the rivers to escape 

 from the ferocity of this ocean pirate, and in many cases 

 the helpless victims have been stranded on the beach in 

 their etforts to avoid capture. The young bluefish 

 ascend the rivers into fresh water; they may be seen 

 under achoole of small fishes, whioh they have driven 



into some place favorable for the attack, and frequently 

 darting up from below to seize their luckless prey. 



Reproduction. — About the spawning habits of this fish 

 nothing is known. Even the date of depositing the eggs 

 is uticertain, although it probably takes place late in the 

 winter and very early in the spring on our Southern 

 coast. The very young fish have never been seen so far 

 as we can learn. The stnallest individuals known were 

 found floating at the surface ofi; the Virginia coast by 

 vessels of the U. S. Fish Commission, The writer has 

 fieine.d examples about an inch long in Great Egg Harbor 

 Bay on the last of August. Hon. Robert B. Roosevelt 

 ban recorddd his discovery of fry of les-a than an inch in 

 length in the Inlet of Far Eockaway, New York, on July 

 10, and the late Mr. Silas Stearns published his belief 

 that the species spawns in the Gulf of Mexico in the 

 spring. At Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard, it is sup- 

 posed that the bluefish spawns about the end of July, on 

 sandy bottom, east of the Vineyard, toward Muske'eget. 



Orowth.—lt is generally believed that the average 

 length of the bluefish by the middle of August is about 

 oin ; by the end of September the length is 7 to Sin. A 

 fish measuring 13 to 14in. is considered to be one year 

 old. It is believed that the species grows very rapidly 

 after it has reached the weight of 4 or 5lb?., sometimes 

 almost doubling its weight during the auramer. Dr. 

 Goode gives the following relation is of weight to length: 

 A. lib. fish meaisureg about 14in.;31Ks., 17in. ; 31b.s,, 2tin. ; 

 4!b«., 34in.; 51bs., 35in.: 61bs., 36 to 37in.; and bibs., 39in. 



Capture. —One of the best known and most exhilarating 

 methods of taking the bluefish is by trolling from a sail- 

 boat with a ^quid of wood, bone of metal, usually accom- 

 panied by a piece of white rag or eel skin by way of ad- 

 ditional decoy. At Woods IIoll a strong cotton line about 

 100yds. long, to which are attached on wire two large- 

 sized sea bass hooks baited with a live eel, was the 

 favorite rig until recently, when the caprice of the fish 

 seemed to call for menhaden or some other bait. In 

 fastening the eel one hook was passed through the lips 

 and the other pierced the tail. The same outfit was used 

 from a boat at anchor near rapid currents which floated 

 the line at or near the surface, and also for heaving out 

 into the surf and pulling in the line rapidly. A very 

 popular style of fishing, now extensively followed, is 

 known as chumming. For this purpose many anglers 

 use an 18-thread Cuttyhuuk line 200yds. long on a large 

 reel and provided with a strong hook attached to about 

 1ft. of piano wire. 



Two things are to be especially guarded against in 

 handling a big flsh — his mad rushes when first hooked 

 and his propensity to rttn up faster than the reel will 

 take in the slack line. A powerful fish with the tide in 

 his favor will make a stubborn fight and a doubtful issue 

 unless great skill is exercised by the angler. In chum- 

 ming a favorite bait is a piece from the back of a men- 

 haden containing the dorsal fin, the rest of the fish being 

 ground or chopped up and thrown overboard to attract 

 the fish. An artificial minnow is often used from a sta- 

 ti(mary boat instead of the squid or other surface lure, 

 and the young are caught in shallow water near the 

 shores with shrimp or pieces of fish. One of the mnst 

 successful all around anglers of my acquaintance, Mr. 

 Willard Nye, -Jr., who is known to many of the readers 

 of Forest and Stre.\m, gives the following timely hint 

 from his own experience in trolling: "The value of 

 knowing that bluefish are feeding on the smaller fish 

 does not seem to be fully understood by the fishermen, 

 for with few exceptions they .stick to the eelskin drail or 

 squid, whereas if they would use an imitation fish, not 

 over Sin. long, made of block tin, Ht least three fish would 

 be hooked to one with the eelskin drail. To meet with 

 the greatest success the tin tquid should have indenta- 

 tions cut or pressed to represent the head, scales and eyes: 

 it should be rubbed bright with the back of a knife, and 

 have a piece of eelskin li or 2in. long hooked through the 

 middle to make a suitable tail for the minnow. When 

 trolling let the boat sail very slowly, so that the drail 

 may sink into the school of bait, as most fish prefer to 

 take their food under water rather than come to the sur- 

 face to strike it and get their mouths full of air." 



T. H. BEA^^ 



THE BIG FISH EAT THE LITTLE ONES. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I am in receipt of a letter from Mr. Henry Wright, the 

 commissioner of the Duke of Sutherland, dated at Trent- 

 ham Hall, July 10. As you probably know, Mr. Wright 

 is an enthusiastic sportsman. Believing tha t an extract 

 would interest your readers, I send it herewith: 



"I am glad to hear from your son that the deer are con- 

 tinuing all right, and hope they will brted the next 

 season. You know the lake here is full of fish. I have 

 been amusing myself by putting out a hand net — just a 

 rabbit net used ordinarily in catching rabbits, about 50ft. 

 long and 2ft. 6in. deep, with corks along the top. We 

 put it out in the lake, tying one end to the weeds, and 

 the fish swim against it, entangling themstdves by 

 floundering about. I go and examine it night and morn- 

 ing, and generally get three or four fish each tioae — pike 

 and tench. 



"To-day we emptied one of the ponds in the park. 

 There vp-ere thousands of fish — pike, perch and roach, one 

 pike weighing lO|lbs. It pleases one's curiosity to see 

 what there is, and is useful in transferring .«ome from one 

 pond to another, but it is murderous work ; so many get 

 smothered in the mud. If ponds were properly con- 

 structed, so that the water could be run off qitickly and 

 not too much mud allowed, I am sure one might breed 

 and sell tons of flsh for the market, treating the business 

 as a food farm. You must have weeds, as they form a 

 harbor for the small fry to escape from the big ones, or 

 else they would soon all be gobbled up. and besides I see 

 that on the weeds are innumerable snails, which serve as 

 food for the whitefish (roach ), and they in their turn form 

 the food for the pike and perch. It is wonderful how 

 nature woi'ks— all in turn preying upon one another, up 

 to man, who selects the biggest and best creatures to feed 

 his body and brain, and so on up to higher nature, but I 

 am rambling now, so I write to say good-night and kind 

 remembrance to all." 



The deer referred to by Mr. Wright are three fallow 

 deer received from the Duke last spring and placed in 

 my park at Stanley, N. J. Since then one of the does has 

 given birth to a beautiful male fawn, which is doing re- 

 JBarkably well. Gbo. Shepabd Faqe-. 



