CHAPTER XVIII

FISHES AS FOOD FOR MAN

=The Flesh of Fishes.=--Among all races of men, fishes are freely eaten as food, either raw, as preferred by the Japanese and Hawaiians, or else as cooked, salted, dried, or otherwise preserved.

The flesh of most fishes is white, flaky, readily digestible, and with an agreeable flavor. Some, as the salmon, are charged with oil, which aids to give an orange hue known as salmon color. Others have colorless oil which may be of various consistencies. Some have dark-red flesh, which usually contains a heavy oil which becomes acrid when stale. Some fishes, as the sharks, have tough, coarse flesh. Some have flesh which is watery and coarse. Some are watery and tasteless, some dry and tasteless. Some, otherwise excellent, have the muscular area, which constitutes the chief edible part of the fish, filled with small bones.

=Relative Rank of Food-fishes.=--The writer has tested most of the noted food-fishes of the Northern Hemisphere. When properly cooked (for he is no judge of raw fish) he would place first in the ranks as a food-fish the eulachon, or candle-fish (_Thaleichthys pacificus_).

This little smelt, about a foot long, ascends the Columbia River, Frazer River, and streams of southern Alaska in the spring in great numbers for the purpose of spawning. Its flesh is white, very delicate, charged with a white and very agreeable oil, readily digested, and with a sort of fragrance peculiar to the species.

Next to this he is inclined to place the ayu (_Plecoglossus altivelis_), a sort of dwarf salmon which runs in similar fashion in the rivers of Japan and Formosa. The ayu is about as large as the eulachon and has similar flesh, but with little oil and no fragrance.

Very near the first among sea-fishes must come the pampano (_Trachinotus carolinus_) of the Gulf of Mexico, with firm, white, finely flavored flesh.

The red surmullet of Europe (_Mullus barbatus_) has been long famed for its delicate flesh, and may perhaps be placed next. Two related species in Polynesia, the munu and the kumu (_Pseudupeneus bifasciatus_ and _Pseudupeneus porphyreus_), are scarcely inferior to it.

Side by side with these belongs the whitefish of the Great Lakes (_Coregonus clupeiformis_). Its flesh, delicate, slightly gelatinous, moderately oily, is extremely agreeable. Sir John Richardson records the fact that one can eat the flesh of this fish longer than any other without the feeling of cloying. The salmon cannot be placed in the front ranks because, however excellent, the stomach soon becomes tired of it. The Spanish mackerel (_Scomberomorus maculatus_), with flesh at once rich and delicate, the great opah (_Lampris luna_), still richer and still more delicate, the bluefish (_Pomatomus saltatrix_) similar but a little coarser, the ulua (_Carangus sem_), the finest large food-fish of the South Seas, the dainty California poppy-fish, miscalled "Pampano" (_Palometa simillima_), and the kingfish firm and well-flavored (_Scomberomorus cavalla_), represent the best of the fishes allied to the mackerel.

The shad (_Alosa sapidissima_), with its sweet, tender, finely oily flesh, stands also near the front among food-fishes, but it sins above all others in the matter of small bones. The weak-fish (_Cynoscion nobilis_) and numerous relatives rank first among those with tender, white, savorous flesh. Among the bass and perch-like fishes, common consent places near the first the striped bass (_Roccus lineatus_), the bass of Europe (_Dicentrarchus labrax_), the susuki of Japan (_Lateolabrax japonicus_), the red tai of Japan (_Pagrus major_ and _P. cardinalis_), the sheep's-head (_Archosargus probatocephalus_), the mutton-fish or Pargo Criollo of Cuba (_Lutianus analis_), the European porgy (_Pagrus pagrus_), the robalo (_Centropomus undecimalis_), the uku (_Aprion virescens_) of Hawaii, the spadefish (_Chætodipterus faber_), and the black bass (_Micropterus dolomieu_).

The various kinds of trout have been made famous the world over. All are attractive in form and color; all are gamey; all have the most charming of scenic surroundings, and, finally, all are excellent as food, not in the first rank perhaps, but well above the second. Notable among these are the European charr (_Salvelinus alpinus_), the American speckled trout or charr (_Salvelinus fontinalis_), the Dolly Varden or malma (_Salvelinus malma_), and the oquassa trout (_Salvelinus oquassa_). Scarcely less attractive are the true trout, the brown trout, or forelle (_Salmo fario_), in Europe, the rainbow-trout (_Salmo irideus_), the steelhead (_Salmo gairdneri_), the cut-throat trout (_Salmo clarkii_), and the Tahoe trout (_Salmo henshawi_), in America, and the yamabe (_Salmo perryi_) of Japan. Not least of all these is the flower of fishes, the grayling (_Thymallus_), of different species in different parts of the world.

Other most excellent food-fishes are the eel (_Anguilla_ species), the pike (_Esox lucius_), the muskallonge (_Esox Roccus_), the sole of Europe (_Solea solea_), the sardine (_Sardinella pilchardus_), the atka-fish (_Pleurogrammus monopterygius_) of Bering Sea, the pescado blanco of Lake Chapala (_Chirostoma estor_ and other species), the Hawaiian mullet (_Mugil cephalus_), the channel catfish (_Ictalurus punctatus_), the turbot (_Scophthalmus maximus_), the barracuda (_Sphyræna_), and the young of various sardines and herring, known as whitebait. Of large fishes, probably the swordfish (_Xiphias gladius_), the halibut (_Hippoglossus hippoglossus_), and the king-salmon, or quinnat (_Oncorhynchus tschawytscha_), may be placed first. Those people who feed on raw fish prefer in general the large parrot-fishes (as _Pseudoscarus jordani_ in Hawaii), or else the young of mullet and similar species.

=Abundance of Food-fishes.=--In general, the economical value of any species depends not on its toothsomeness, but on its abundance and the ease with which it may be caught and preserved. It is said that more individuals of the herring (_Clupea harengus_ in the Atlantic, _Clupea pallasi_ in the Pacific) exist than of any other species. The herring is a good food-fish and whenever it runs it is freely sought. According to Björnsön, wherever the school of herring touches the coast of Norway, there a village springs up, and this is true in Scotland, Newfoundland, and from Killisnoo in Alaska to Otaru in Japan, and to Strielok in Siberia. Goode estimates the herring product of the North Atlantic at 1,500,000,000 pounds annually. In 1881 Professor Huxley used these words:

"It is said that 2,500,000,000 or thereabout of herrings are every year taken out of the North Sea and the Atlantic. Suppose we assume the number to be 3,000,000,000 so as to be quite safe. It is a large number undoubtedly, but what does it come to? Not more than that of the herrings which may be contained in one shoal, if it covers half a dozen square miles, and shoals of much larger size are on record. It is safe to say that scattered through the North Sea and the Atlantic, at one and the same time, there must be scores of shoals, any one of which would go a long way toward supplying the whole of man's consumption of herrings."

The codfish (_Gadus callarias_ in the Atlantic; _Gadus macrocephalus_ in the Pacific) likewise swarms in all the northern seas, takes the hook readily, and is better food when salted and dried than it is when fresh.

Next in economic importance probably stands the mackerel of the Atlantic (_Scomber scombrus_), a rich, oily fish which bears salting better than most.

Not less important is the great king-salmon, or quinnat (_Oncorhyanchus tschawytscha_), and the still more valuable blue-back salmon, or redfish (_Oncorhynchus nerka_).

The salmon of the Atlantic (_Salmo salar_), the various species of sturgeon (_Acipenser_), the sardines (_Sardinella_), the halibut (_Hippoglossus_), are also food-fishes of great importance.

=Variety of Tropical Fishes.=--In the tropics no one species is represented by enormous numbers of individuals as is the case in colder regions. On the other hand, the number of species regarded as food-fishes is much greater in any given port. In Havana, about 350 different species are sold as food in the markets, and an equal number are found in Honolulu. Upward of 600 different species appear in the markets of Japan. In England, on the contrary, about 50 species make up the list of fishes commonly used as food. Yet the number of individual fishes is probably not greater about Japan or Hawaii than in a similar stretch of British coast.

=Economic Fisheries.=--Volumes have been written on the economic value of the different species of fishes, and it is not the purpose of the present work to summarize their contents.

Equally voluminous is the literature on the subject of catching fishes. It ranges in quality from the quaint wisdom of the "Compleat Angler" and the delicate wit of "Little Rivers" to elaborate discussions of the most economic and effective forms and methods, of the beam-trawl, the purse-seine, and the codfish hook. In general, fishes are caught in four ways--by baited hooks, by spears, by traps, and by nets. Special local methods, such as the use of the tamed cormorant[146] in the catching of the ayu, by the Japanese fishermen at Gifu, may be set aside for the moment, and all general methods of fishing come under one of these four classes. Of these methods, the hook, the spear, the seine, the beam-trawl, the gill-net, the purse-net, the sweep-net, the trap and the weir are the most important. The use of the hook is again extremely varied. In the deep sea long, sunken lines, are sometimes used for codfish, each baited with many hooks. For pelagic fish, a baited hook is drawn swiftly over the surface, with a "spoon" attached which looks like a living fish. In the rivers a line is attached to a pole, and when fish are caught for pleasure or for the joy of being in the woods, recreation rises to the dignity of angling. Angling may be accomplished with a hook baited with an earthworm, a grasshopper, a living fish, or the larva of some insect. The angler of to-day, however, prefers the artificial fly, as being more workmanlike and also more effective than bait-fishing. The man who fishes, not for the good company of the woods and brooks, but to get as many fish as possible to eat or sell, is not an angler but a pot-fisher. The man who kills all the trout he can, to boast of his skill or fortune, is technically known as a trout-hog. Ethically, it is better to lie about your great catches of fine fishes than to make them. For most anglers, also, it is more easy.

=Fisheries.=--With the multiplicity of apparatus for fishing, there is the greatest variety in the boats which may be used. The fishing-fleet of any port of the world is a most interesting object, as are also the fishermen with their quaint garb, plain speech, and their strange songs and calls with the hauling in of the net.

For much information on the fishing apparatus in use in America the reader is referred to the Reports of the Fisheries in the Tenth Census, in 1880, under the editorship of Dr. George Brown Goode. In these reports Goode, Stearns, Earle, Gilbert, Bean, and the present writer have treated very fully of all economic relations of the American fishes. In an admirable work entitled "American Fishes," Dr. Goode, with the fine literary touch of which he was master, has fully discoursed of the game- and food-fishes of America with especial reference to the habits and methods of capture of each. To these sources, to Jordan and Evermann's "Food and Game Fishes of North America," and to many other works of similar purport in other lands, the reader is referred for an account of the economic and the human side of fish and fisheries.

=Angling.=--It is no part of the purpose of this work to describe the methods or materials of angling, still less to sing its praises as a means of physical or moral regeneration. We may perhaps find room for a first and a last word on the subject; the one the classic from the pen of the angler of the brooks of Staffordshire, and the other the fresh expression of a Stanford student setting out for streams such as Walton never knew, the Purissima, the Stanislaus, or perchance his home streams, the Provo or the Bear.

"And let me tell you, this kind of fishing with a dead rod, and laying night-hooks, are like putting money to use; for they both work for the owners when they do nothing but sleep, or eat, or rejoice, as you know we have done this last hour, and sat as quietly and as free from cares under this sycamore as Virgil's Tityrus and his Meliboeus did under their broad beech-tree. No life, my honest scholar,--no life so happy and so pleasant as the life of a well-governed angler; for when the lawyer is swallowed up with business and the statesman is preventing or contriving plots, then we sit on the cowslip-banks, hear the birds sing, and possess ourselves in as much quietness as these silent silver streams which we now see glide so quietly by us. Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling, as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, 'Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did'; and so, if I might be judge, 'God never made a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.'

"I'll tell you, scholar, when I sat last on this primrose-bank, and looked down these meadows, I thought of them as Charles the Emperor did of Florence, 'That they were too pleasant to be looked on but only on holidays.'

"Gentle Izaak! He has been dead these many years, but his disciples are still faithful. When the cares of business lie heavy and the sound of wheels jarring on cobbled streets grows painful, one's fingers itch for the rod; one would away to the quiet brook among the pines, where one has fished so often. Every man who has ever got the love of the stream in his blood feels often this longing.

"It comes to me each year with the first breath of spring. There is something in the sweetness of the air, the growing things, the 'robin in the greening grass' that voices it. Duties that have before held in their performance something of pleasure become irksome, and practical thoughts of the day's work are replaced by dreamy pictures of a tent by the side of a mountain stream--close enough to hear the water's singing in the night. Two light bamboo rods rest against the tent-pole, and a little column of smoke rising straight up through the branches marks the supper fire. Jack is preparing the evening meal, and, as I dream, there comes to me the odor of crisply browned trout and sputtering bacon--was ever odor more delicious? I dare say that had the good Charles Lamb smelled it as I have, his 'Dissertation on Roast Pig' would never have been written. But then Charles Lamb never went a-fishing as we do here in the west--we who have the mountains and the fresh air so boundlessly.

"And neither did Izaak Walton for that matter. He who is sponsor for all that is gentle in angling missed much that is best in the sport by living too early. He did not experience the exquisite pleasure of wading down mountain streams in supposedly water-proof boots and feeling the water trickling in coolingly; nor did he know the joy of casting a gaudy fly far ahead with a four-ounce rod, letting it drift, insect-like, over that black hole by the tree stump, and then feeling the seaweed line slip through his fingers to the _whirr_ of the reel. And, at the end of the day, supper over, he did not squat around a big camp-fire and light his pipe, the silent darkness of the mountains gathering round, and a basketful of willow-packed trout hung in the clump of pines by the tent. Izaak's idea of fishing did not comprehend such joy. With a can of worms and a crude hook, he passed the day by quiet streams, threading the worms on his hook and thinking kindly of all things. The day's meditations over, he went back to the village, and, mayhap, joined a few kindred souls over a tankard of ale at the sign of the Red Lobster. But he missed the mountains, the water rushing past his tent, the bacon and trout, the camp-fire--the physical exaltation of it all. His kind of fishing was angling purely, while modern Waltons, as a rule, eschew the worm.

"To my mind, there is no real sport in any kind of fishing except fly-fishing. This sitting on the bank of a muddy stream with your bait sunk, waiting for a bite, may be conducive to gentleness and patience of spirit, but it has not the joy of action in which a healthy man revels. How much more sport is it to clamber over fallen logs that stretch far out a-stream, to wade slipping over boulders and let your fly drop caressingly on ripples and swirling eddies and still holes! It is worth all the work to see the gleam of a silver side as a half-pounder rises, and, with a flop, takes the fly excitedly to the bottom. And then the nervous thrill as, with a deft turn of the wrist, you hook him securely--whoever has felt that thrill cannot forget it. It will come back to him in his law office when he should be thinking of other things; and with it will come a longing for that dear remembered stream and the old days. That is the hold trout-fishing takes on a man.

"It is spring now and I feel the old longing myself, as I always do when life comes into the air and the smell of new growth is sweet. I got my rod out to-day, put it together, and have been looking over my flies. If I cannot use them, I can at least muse over days of the past and dream of those to come." (WALDEMAR YOUNG.)

FOOTNOTES:

[146] The cormorant is tamed for this purpose. A harness is placed about its wings and a ring about the lower part of its neck. Two or three birds may be driven by a boy in a shallow stream, a small net behind him to drive the fish down the river. In a large river like that of Gifu, where the cormorants are most used, the fishermen hold the birds from the boats and fish after dark by torchlight. The bird takes a great interest in the work, darts at the fishes with great eagerness, and fills its throat and gular pouch as far down as the ring. Then the boy takes him out of the water, holds him by the leg and shakes the fishes out into a basket. When the fishing is over the ayu are preserved, the ring is taken off from the bird's neck, and the zako or minnows are thrown to him for his share. These he devours greedily.