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OUR FRIEND THE BLUEFISH 
A GAMY FIGHTER AND BITER. 
By Russell A. Bowen. 
“Give me, Great Father, give me strength and health, 
A liberal heart, affections kind and free; 
My rod—my line—be these my pride, my wealthl 
They yield me present joys—they draw my soul 
to Thee.” 
A BEAUTIFUL prayer these lines. Every 
angler’s prayer I hope. The joys of fish¬ 
ing do bring strength and health. And 
God, man and nature are brought closer to¬ 
gether and the result is a more happy, har¬ 
monious life. ’Tis true, friend. And most 
every devotee of rod and line bears out this 
statement. However, before I get deep into a 
preachment I will stop and take up the subject 
I have in mind—our friend the bluefish—that 
gamy fighter and biter. 
A royal sport and pursuit indeed is blue¬ 
fishing : 
“And, as he darts, the waters blue 
Are streaked with gleams of many a hue 
Green, orange, purple and gold.” 
—Matthew G. Lewis. 
A more glorious, exciting and healthful sport 
is difficult to find. Every moment is full of 
action and doing—there’s no denying it. Place 
yourself for a space in one of the little craft 
that fly along, yes, literally fly, with her scuppers 
well under and your shining squid some fifty or 
more feet behind you flashing in the sunlight as 
it bounds from wave to wave. It is fascinating 
to watch the squid in its jerky course over the 
emerald bosom of the sea. But suddenly your 
mind is taken from the squid—you get a strike! 
Tense moments follow. If this is your first 
blue you will have your hands full. If it is not 
you will have them full anyhow. The veterans 
of the sport know his subsequent antics. 
No fish makes a more gallant nor lasting fight 
than the blue. He will play and run away with 
your line. First he rushes madly and headlong 
to the right of you, then to the left of you; 
but these rushes cannot last forever and you 
are soon rewarded in being able to claim a 
little slack line. Mr. Bluefish, however, is not 
so easily captured. Resuming his former tactics 
he rushes off with the speed of an express train, 
darting and turning in every direction seeming 
to confuse you and for the moment his cunning 
manoeuvre is almost successful and away goes a 
good part of the precious line so valiantly fought 
for. But Man, as he generally is, is to be the 
victor and slowly but surely the battle is brought 
to a termination. Yes, slowly, for the bluefish 
is a very stubborn and vicious fighter and it is 
only after the hardest kind of a struggle that he 
is brought to bay and alongside the boat. Even 
then he lunges and plunges, and almost seems to 
say, “I am unconquerable,” but finally he is 
brought to gaff and we land him—a good ten 
pounder, still full of life and fight. 
He is a beauty. We look and look and marvel 
upon the splendid contour of his fine body and 
our laudations in the highest are his. Our ad¬ 
miration knows no bounds—neither would any¬ 
one else’s if they had a like experience—and we 
then and there proclaim the bluefish “a lord of 
the deep.” 
Along with the striped bass the bluefish, to my 
mind, is the game fish par excellence of the 
brine, just as the black bass and salmon are of 
fresh water. 
To give an outline of the various modes of 
capture would make this article too long, so later 
on, in another issue, I will touch upon this phase 
of the sport. 
A word or so regarding the bluefish will be 
interesting, and speaking of him as a fighter I 
will quote a few lines from the “Speech of Hon. 
N. E. Atwood, of the Cape District, 1870,” anent 
the pugnacity and savageness of this lord of the 
deep. 
“Call them, sir, by whatever name we please; 
whether bluefish, of Massachusetts Bay; snapper, 
of New Bedford; horse-mackerel, on the shores 
of Rhode Island; or tailor, in Delaware Bay, 
they are the same Temnodon Saltator still, and 
deal out destruction and death to other species 
in all the localities they visit.” 
By Professor Mitchell the classical name, Tem¬ 
nodon Saltator, has been given to this fish; Tem- 
no, to cut to pieces, undoubtedly meaning its 
jaws of sharp teeth, and Saltator, referring to a 
pantomime dancer, having in mind its leaping or 
skipping—a very fitting and appropriate name. 
Along our New England coast the bluefish is 
usually called the horse-mackerel, but, of course, 
that is a different fish, and grows to the no small 
weight of one thousand pounds, sometimes more. 
The bluefish on the other hand rarely reaches 
twenty pounds, although there are exceptional 
cases, and reports come filtering through now and 
then of occasional thirty pounders. 
His jaws are exceedingly Strong and his gill 
covers, three in number, are like steel plates. A 
word of admonition—beware of his teeth for his 
jaws are armed with them and they are very 
sharp and closely set, and will cut in two a cord 
one-quarter of an inch in diameter just as neat¬ 
ly and as smoothly as could be done with the 
sharpest knife. And each one of these teeth are 
like saw-teeth so perfectly do they match, there¬ 
fore, your fingers should receive the utmost con¬ 
sideration in taking a hook from his powerful 
and wicked jaws. 
The shimmer and shine of his leadeny blue 
back, as he is taken from the water dripping wet 
in the rays of a luminous summer sun, we are 
all pretty nearly familiar with. This leadeny 
blue color of his back extends downward to the 
imperceptible lateral lines and his belly is of a 
snowy-whiteness. The rest of the fish, including 
his general appearance and shape needs no dwell¬ 
ing upon. 
From now on bluefishing will be good and the 
opportunity is open to every reader of Forest 
and Stream who will, to hie away to the haunts 
of the blue and get some real sport and excite¬ 
ment. Take my word for it, brother, ’twill do 
you good and when you’ve finished your day’s 
sport you’ll say I’m right. 
The call of the big outdoors is irresistible and 
the good it will do body and mind is beyond 
calculation. 
Whether you hit the trail leading to that little 
old log-cabin way back in the woods, with its 
quiet and solitude, where communion is held 
daily with Nature, or cruise the broad bosom of 
old Neptune’s vast and heaving domain, where 
you are called upon, almost continually, to guard 
against the strange and uncertain vagaries and 
vacillations of the elements, you will be working 
toward one common goal—good health. 
The only panacea for continued good health 
is life in the open as much as possible. And the 
good that will come therefrom will exceed all the 
words of tomes and tomes. 
