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Mutton-fish
This snapper, which is also called pargo or pargo criollo, reaches 2 feet or more in length and a weight of 25 pounds, and is found from Pensacola to Brazil, straying occasionally northward in the Gulf Stream to Woods Hole. It is common at Key West, and in the Havana markets it is the most important food-fish, being always abundant and highly esteemed. About Key West it is found on rock bottom in 3 to 9 fathoms, and is caught with hook and line. They are quite gamy, taking the hook promptly and fighting well. They are found throughout the year, but are scarcest in July and August, which is their spawning-time; the eggs are non-adhesive and the size of a rice-grain.
In Porto Rico this species is highly esteemed. It is called sama or pargo criollo. It is usually taken in the fish-traps set in 5 to 20 fathoms, though considerable numbers of the smaller individuals are caught with the haul-seines in shallow water along the shore.
Colour in life, dark olive-green above, many of the scales with pale blue spots, these forming irregular oblique streaks upward and backward; similar stripes more regular and numerous on caudal peduncle and above anal; in old fishes these blue spots and streaks disappear; belly white, strongly tinged with brick-red; about 6 narrow, dusky vertical bars, a little broader than the interspaces and not well defined, between gill-opening and anal; head bronze-olive, darker above; a broad, undulating, pearly streak from snout below eye to upper edge of gill-opening; a narrow blue streak from eye to nostril; iris fiery red; pectorals, caudal, anal, and ventrals brick-red, the caudal narrowly margined with black and somewhat bronze above; dorsal reddish along the rays and tips of membranes, otherwise yellowish; a distinct lateral blotch just above lateral line and below the first soft ray of dorsal, about as large as pupil, smaller than in other species similarly marked, and seldom disappearing with age; axil and bar across base of pectoral above pale or dusky olive.