some, active fish of about four pounds weight, resembling the
squetegue or weakfish of New York, but having dark spots on the back,
like the lake-trout of the Adirondacks. This is the salt-water
trout, so called, though it is not a salmonine: it is _Otolithus
Caroliniensis_, the weakfish being _Otolithus regalis_.

Next I hooked a strong fish which seemed disposed to run under the
mangrove roots. "That's a big grouper," cried Pecetti. "Keep him away
from the roots, or you will lose him."

I did my best, but he was too strong: the rod bent into a hoop with
the strain, but I had to let him run, and he took to his hold under
the bank, from whence I was not able to dislodge him, and had to break
my line, losing hooks and snood. While this was going on, Herbert, who
had put on a mullet bait and let it float down the current, hooked and
secured after five minutes' play a channel bass or redfish of about
seven pounds. This is a fish peculiar to the Southern waters, good
on the table when in season, which is the spring and summer: in the
winter it spawns, and is not so good. When above ten or twelve pounds
in weight it is of a brilliant copper-red on back and sides: the
smaller ones are of a steel-blue on the back, and iridescent when
first caught. It grows to the weight of fifty or sixty pounds, runs in
great schools, and in habits and play when hooked resembles the allied
species _Labrax lineatus_, the striped bass. Cuvier named the species
_Corvina ocellata_, from the black spot which it bears near the tail.

The bottom here was rather foul, being covered with old logs and
branches of the mangroves, which, being a very heavy wood, had sunk
to the bottom and become covered with barnacles and other crustaceae,
which attracted the fish to this spot. They bit well, but so did the
sand-flies: as soon as the breeze died away they came out from the
bushes in clouds, and attacked us so fiercely that we were obliged to
quit.

"We'll go down toward the inlet," said Pecetti: "there's good
fishing-ground and more breeze." So he set the sail, and we ran down
the river, past the yachts, about a mile, where we came to anchor near
a bluff covered with trees, in a deep channel. Here we first caught
blackfish or sea-bass, of small size, but plenty; also snappers,
lively fish of the perch family, of a red color, and from a pound to
two pounds in weight, which usually take a mullet bait, in the swift
current near the surface. Then a school