California White Sea-bass — Part 4

Cynoscion nobilis (Ayres)

Images coming soon.

The drum makes a loud drumming noise, especially during the breeding season, a habit shared by many other members of the family. Small fish under about 20 pounds are said not to drum. The males drum loudest, the females in a softer tone, and the drumming is probably for the purpose of attracting the opposite sex.

In the northern portion of its range it is not regarded as a food-fish of any value, but from Chesapeake Bay southward it is held in higher esteem. The flesh is coarse, though tender and of delicate flavour. The roe are considered a great delicacy and are often salted and dried.

The drum is usually taken in seines or traps, but it takes the hook readily when baited with a crab or shrimp, and its large size makes its capture and landing a matter of no little interest to the angler.

The scales of the drum are used to some extent in Florida in the manufacture of the sprays of flowers and other articles of fancy-work which are sold under the name of "fish-scale jewelry." They are large and silvery, and so hard that it is necessary to remove them with an ax or hatchet.

Colour, grayish silvery, with 4 or 5 broad dark vertical bars, these disappearing with age; usually no oblique dark streaks along the rows of scales above; fins blackish.

GENUS APLODINOTUS RAFINESQUE

This genus contains a single species, Aplodinotus grunniens, a large freshwater fish occurring in our larger lakes and sluggish streams and bayous from the Great Lakes and west of the Alleghenies southward through the Mississippi Valley to Louisiana, and in lowland streams through Texas to the mouth of the Rio Grande. It has recently been found by us in the Rio Usumacinta, in Tabasco, southern Mexico.

It is most abundant in the Great Lakes and in the lowland streams of Louisiana and Texas. A great number of vernacular names have been bestowed upon this interesting fish. In the Great Lakes it is the sheepshead or freshwater drum; in the lakes of northern Indiana it is called crocus, evidently a corruption of croaker; in the Ohio it is the white perch, gray perch, or simply perch; farther south it is drum or thunder-pumper; and in Louisiana, gaspergou.

It is a bottom fish, feeding chiefly upon crustaceans and mollusks. Northward the freshwater drum is not greatly valued as a food-fish, but in the South it is highly esteemed. Ordinarily we have found the flesh tough and coarse in fibre, and often with a disagreeable sharklike odour.

The gaspergou is one of our largest freshwater fishes, as it reaches a weight of 50 to 60 pounds and a length of 4 feet.

Colour, grayish silvery, dusky above, sometimes very dark; back sometimes with oblique dusky streaks along the rows of scales.