FOREST AND STREAM. 
287 
The Oarfish. 
BY BARTON WARKEN t:VERMANN. 
Through the intellingent interest of Mr. Robert S. 
Meyer, keeper of the Light Station at Anclote Keys, 
Florida, the Bureau of Fisheries has received an ac- 
count of the capture at that place of a specimen of a 
repiarkable fish not previously known from any point 
on the Atlantic coast of America. Mr. Meyer says: 
"I inclose a rough sketch of a part of a fish which 
was killed by a shark Sunday the 12th of February, and 
which drifted upon the beach on west side of the light. 
The part which came on shore was 7 feet long, about 
9 inches wide, and 4 inches thick. The skin was like 
bright silver, with no scales, with black marks, as 
shown in the sketch. Eight blood-red plumes which 
corne out at the top of the head were each about 
28 inches long. One long plume 36 inches long came 
out of the under jaw. All the plumes or fins were 
blood-red. The plumes could open at the ends and 
look like small fans as shown in the sketch. Could 
you kindly tell me the name of the fish described? 
This description, together with the very good sketch 
accompanying it, leaves no room for doubt that the 
strange fish was a specimen of the oarfish, Regalecus 
glesne,^ described originally in 1788 by Ascanius from 
a specimen which came ashore at Glesvaer, Norway. 
These fishes are very remarkable, not only on ac- 
count of their peculiar appearance and structure, but 
because of their enormous size. They have been known 
to attain a length of 20 feet, and it is not at all im- 
probable that they reach even a much greater length. 
Man}' of the creatures popularly identified as "sea 
serpents" were doubtless large individuals of this fish. 
Indeed, as Goode and Bean remark, it is quite safe 
to assign to this group all the so-called "sea serpents," 
which have been described as swimming rapidly at or 
THE GARFISH. 
near the surface, with a horse-like head raised above 
the water, surmounted by a mane-like crest of red or 
brown. 
An example came ashore at Hungry Bay, Bermuda, 
in i860. It was 17 feet long, and was described by 
the people who saw it before it was captured as being 
very much longer and as having a head like that of a 
horse and with, a flaming red mane. 
Dr. Gunther (in the Challenger Report), has 
brought together a list of the examples of this species, 
so far as known to science. His record gives 14 
from the Scandinavian coasts from 1740 to 1852; 19 on 
the British coasts from 1759 to 1884; ' one in the 
Mediterranean; 3 at the Cape of Good Hope; one in 
the Indian Ocean; 5 on the coast of New Zealand; 
and one at Bermuda. Those on the Scandinavian and 
British coasts were observed: 4 in January, 5 in Feb- 
ruary, 8 in March, 2 in April, i in May, i in June, i 
in July, 2 in August, i in September and I in October. 
Gunther also states that by far the greatest propor- 
tion of captures, in the Northern Hemisphere, at least, 
was in the stormy season. 
These fishes are true deep-sea fishes likely to be met 
with in, any or all parts of the oceans. They are 
generally found when floating dead on the surface or 
thrown ashore by the waves. Their body is like a 
band, specimens 15 to 20 feet long, being only 10 to 12 
inches deep, and i or 2 inches broad in their thickest 
part. The eye is large, the mouth small, the teeth 
feeble, and the head deep and short. A high dorsal 
fin runs the whole length of the back and is supported 
by exceedingly numerous rays. Its forward portion is 
•on the head, is detached from the rest of the fin, and 
is composed of very long flexible spines expanded 
at the ends, and bright red in color. The general color 
of the body is silvery. 
When these fishes reach the surface of the water 
the expansion of the gases within their bodies has 
so loosened all the parts of their muscular and bony 
system that they can be lifted out of the water only 
with great difficulty, and nearly always portions of the 
body are broken or lost. The bones contain very 
little bony matter and are very porous, thin and light. 
At what depth these fishes live is unknown. No speci- 
men has ever been obtained in the deep-sea dredge, 
but that they are not rare in the ocean depths is 
evidenced by the frequency with which dead fish or 
fragments are found. 
"Young individuals of this or related species are not 
rarely met with near the "surface. They possess the 
most extraordinary development of fin-rays observed 
in the whole class of fishes, some of them being several 
times longer than the body, and provided with lappet- 
like dilat-ations. There can be no doubt that fishes 
with such delicate appendages are bred and live in 
depths where the water is absolutely quiet, as life in 
the disturbed waters of the surface would deprive them 
j^t oijce of these delicate orgij??^, ' ' ^ 
Striped Bass Fishing in J 829. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
My dear Sir— The following account of rock fishing in the 
Susquehanna is taken from No. 3 Vol. I. of the American Turf 
Register and Sporting Magazine for November, 1829. I recently 
came across it and send it to you, thinking it may be of interest 
to your many angling readers. I am yours faithfully, 
Daniel B. Fearing. 
"Perry Point, Sept. 25, 1829— Mr. Editor: Seeing 
in the first number of your sporting magazine an in- 
vitation for gentlemen to send y6u such articles on 
sporting subjects, as their observation enables them to 
write, I have sent you an article on the subject of 
trolling for rock fish in the Susquehanna. It is all 
taken from actual observations of my own. I have 
frequently caught fish in the manner I have attempted 
to describe, and nothing, that I am sensible of, is stated 
as a fact, which is not so. When it is stated that the 
boat is rowed up a current running down at an angle 
of 45 degrees, I am not convinced that it is an exag- 
geration. Every thing else I know is true, 'all of which 
I saw and felt.' A sporting work should be a depository 
of truth; for any one may make himself a sportsman 
by exaggeration." "H. S." 
Trolling for Rock Fish in the Susquehanna. 
The season for trolling begins in the latter part of 
May, and commonly ends about the, middle of July; 
but some years lasts during August. In the month of 
June, the rock fish generally bite best. To make good 
fishing, the river should not be very high nor low, 
muddy nor clear, but betwixt extremes, in these re- 
spects. If the water be clear, the fish dart off at sight 
of the line; and, it is thought, they leave the rapids, 
when the river is rising, or muddy, to feed upon the 
flats in the Chesapeake. 
Trolling is very much practiced from Port Deposit, 
to almost any given distance up 
the river, but not below. The 
grass that the ducks feed upon 
grows too thick on the flats in 
tide water for trolling, and the 
channel is uniformly too deep. 
The rapids above, where the 
water is in many parts shoal, 
and the rocky bottom clear of 
grass, is the proper place for 
trolling. 
As I have never seen this 
method of fishing noticed in 
any sporting work, I propose 
giving such an account of it as, 
I hope, a reader who has never 
witnessed it will understand. 
The troller provides himself 
with a convenient sized, light, 
well-caulked skiff; it should be 
large enough to carry four per- 
sons without sinking deep in the 
water. He must also take care 
to get two good oarsmen, accus- 
tomed to row among the rapids. 
The lines generally used are 
made of flax (sometimes of 
cotton), and twisted very hard, 
from 90 to 130 feet long. On each line are two brass or 
steel swivels, one about a foot from the hook, the 
other some twenty or more, according to the length 
of the line. The lines must be very strong, but not so 
thick as to be clumsy, and the steel hooks sharp, with 
large barbs. The figures of the hooks are made to 
vary according to the notions of their different owners, 
who frequently have them made to order, by smiths 
m the neighborhood. The long shanked hook is gen- 
erally esteemed best. Old trollers are as particular 
about the shapes, of their hooks, as cockers are about 
their gaflles. One end of the line is made fast to a 
cork or buoy as large as a common seine cork. This 
cork is thrown overboard, wheii the hook catches 
against a stone or limb of a tree; for the boat is 
under such headway, and the line being nearly all out, 
if the fisherman holds on to his line, he will break it. 
He, therefore, in such case throws the buoy overboard, 
by which he can find his line, and goes back at his 
leisure to take it up, and disengage his hook. The 
bait consists of small fish, such as anchovies, minnows, 
chubs, etc., etc. If the troller intends starting at day- 
break (the usual hour), he angles for his bait the 
afternoon previous, and buries them in the wet sand 
by the edge of some convenient stream, or keeps them 
m spring water. If they are exposed to the atmos- 
phere during a warm summer night, they become 
tender, and tear from the hook. 
Two persons generally fish from the same boat; one 
of them steers with one hand, and fishes with the other. 
Each fisherman lets his line out over the side of the 
boat nearest to him, and close to the stern (where they 
sit), holding it in his hand, a few inches from the water, 
and leaves the end attached to the cork in the bottom 
of the boat. He pays out nearly all his line, and keeps 
constantly pulling it, by short jerks, to feel if it is 
running over a rock or tree top. The boat is rowed as 
fast as possible across the river, from shore to shore, 
above, and as near to the falls as they can go, to 
avoid being swept down them. The rock fish lie below 
the falls and ripples, waiting for the small fish that are 
earned over by the current. Here then the bait falls over, 
with a constant rotary motion, like a live fish whirled 
over, side foremost, and struggles in vain against the 
falls. The swivels turn every time the bait turns, and 
prevent the line from twisting up into knots; and as 
there are no sinkers, the rapid headway of the boat 
drags them along so fast that the lines have no time 
to sink. At sight of the bait tumbling over the falls, 
the rock fish darts upward from his cavern in the rocks 
and swallows hook and all. The bite of the rock is 
quick as lightning, and gives a strong sudden jerk to 
the arm of the fisherman. When he first discovers he 
is snared, he rises to the top of the water, and begins 
to lash it furiously with his forked tail, like "a spirit 
conjured from the vasty deep," then plunges down 
again to the bottom. He is drag^e.d from thence by 
the fisherman, wbo hauls in his l©ilg line, hand over 
|?3n4, until he brings his fish alongside of the t»o^t. 
If he is of tolerable size, weighing only seven or ten 
pounds, the troller lifts him into the boat by the line, 
but if the fish is large, he runs his arm down into the 
water and lifts him in by his gills. The excitement that 
this scene produces in all those in the boat, is not to 
be described. One instant you see the fish making 
the water foam with his tail, the next you lose sight 
of him; one instant the troller feels him jerking des- 
perately backward, the next he darts ahead toward the 
boat, carrying the line with him, and the fisherman 
who ceases to feel him, is distressed for fear he has 
broken loose from the hook. The black oarsmen ease 
up rowing to laugh and shout with great glee. The 
troller's anxiety to secure his fish is so great, that he 
alone, of all the company, is silent and full of un- 
easiness, until he gets him into the boat. In this man- 
ner, it is not unusual to catch, with two lines, ten or twenty 
fish, varying in weight from five to twenty pounds each, 
in an hour — sometimes they are caught much larger. 
When the fish do not bite fast, the troller does not 
become wearied soon; his line is always out, and he is 
in_ constant expectation of feeling a bite, as the boat 
glides backward and forward across the river, in search 
of luck; he is not confined to one rock, like the sleepy 
angler. 
This would be very dangerous sport to persons un- 
accustomed to it; let no presumptuous cits, venture 
upon it by themselves. The flat-laottomed boat must 
be rowed through the most dangerous falls and whirl- 
pools in the river. Sometimes she is forced, at an im- 
perceptible progress, against a current, running down 
at an angle of 45 degrees. If one of the oarsmen hap- 
pen to fail in strength, or to dip his oar with a false 
stroke, the current will snatch it upward out of his 
hands, and the frail skiff will be dashed to pieces 
among the rocks. Often they are obliged to get out 
of the boat on some rock above water, and haul her 
oyer. A person unaccustomed to it cannot rely upon 
his senses of hearing or seeing. He is first deafened by 
the stunning roar of the incessant flood, then sickened 
by the tossing of the skiff among the waves and eddies. 
The huge rocks that rear themselves thick to oppose 
the rushing waters, covered with eagles and cormorants, 
and the little islands all seem to be swimming back- 
ward. And now she flies across a shoal — at first glimpse 
the little skiff seems to rest securely on the bottom; 
at the next, the solid bottom appears deceitfully to 
recede from beneath her, and leave her to founder in 
the dark waters of a bottomless swirl. And again, be- 
fore he is aware of it, she seems to have approached 
so near the falls that nothing can prevent her from 
going over side foremost. All these false appearances 
rushing in succession, quick as thought, upon the mind 
of the troubled cockney, turn his brain with dizziness. 
It is not often you can procure white men to row, 
for the fatigue is excessive. If brother Jonathan is not 
to make something considerably more than the price 
of a day's labor by it, or to partake of the sport of 
fishing, he will have nothing to do with it. 
If you want an oarsmen you must look up the free 
blacks. These descendants of the wild men of Africa 
(some of them, no doubt, descendants of kings), hate 
the _ dull labors of civilized life, and love fishing, by 
instinct, as all their fathers did before them. You may 
find the smoke of their cabins among the treetops, half- 
way up the craggy sides of the river hills, or in the 
foggy bottoms just below. Wake him up at peep of 
day — drag him out from the warm side of his grumbling 
spouse, and good-natured Sambo, stretching his big 
limbs like the figure of waking Hercules, opens his eyes 
on the fishing lines and whiskey jug, and begins to 
brag: "Oh, master, if it's fishing you'r ater, I'm your 
man. Who you got kin row ginst Samboo — Sambo 
never tire." He takes the bounty at once (a drink of 
whiskey), and without stopping to ask what more you 
will give him, shoulders his oar, and longs to be off in 
the first boat. 
Selfishness or Sentiment — Which? 
Of selfishness it may be truly said that it is the synthe- 
sis of all that is mean and low in human nature. It is 
as clearly in evidence to-day as in the earlier time when 
it was more frankly avowed and warmly defended, when, 
as now, might made right, and poets sang, 
"That they should take who have the power. 
And they should keep who can." 
The hypocrisy of the present time may demand that 
the tiger claws of selfishness be concealed in a velvet 
covering, but the painful injuries inflicted upon the body 
politic prove their repulsive presence and power to harm 
as in the past. 
Just now the pernicious consequences of seining fish 
upon their spawning beds in Missisquoi Bay— that por- 
tion of Lake Champlain that extends into the Province of 
Quebec — are heralded forth, and condemnation by an 
outraged public invited. Some of the people who are 
more directly affected and aggrieved throw up their hands 
in holy horror and proclaim their denunciation of the 
people who resort to this method o£ taking fish to the 
world. And they go further, and allege that because these 
people owe allegiance to a different flag they are 
prompted to do this out of spite in a turbulent spirit of 
opposition to the interest and desires of another people; 
and that because they have votes their representatives in 
the Provincial Parliament will do nothing antagonistic 
to their interests, or to promote legislation that will be 
effectual to stop this nefarious practice. 
Such sweeping charges and insinuations deserve more 
than a passing notice; and while I do not pose as the 
apotogist for, or the defender of, seining fish upon their 
spawning grounds, I make bold to say that there is noth- 
ing mconsistent in the practice or out of harmony with 
the ethics of sportsmanship— not as proclaimed from the 
housetops, but as very generally practiced— and that it is 
not good form or becoming in those living in glass 
houses to hurl such unhandsome stones against those no 
more sinning than themselves. 
Having spent all the years of my youth and early man- 
hood in the vicinity of Missisquoi Bay, and being con- 
versant with the facts in the case, as well as the extent of 
the depredation wrought, I may without presumption 
claim to be familiar with the question at issue, and I 
unhesitatingly pronqune^ the motive that prompts th© 
