There is no more fascinating and profitable study than the fish life of the lakes, ponds, rivers, brooks, bays, estuaries, and coasts of the United States; and no more important service can be rendered our American boys than to teach them to become familiar with our native food and game fishes, to realize their needs, and by example and precept to {106} endeavor to secure for the fishes fair consideration and treatment.
Esox lucius--Common pike pickerel
Oncorhynchus tschawytscha--Chinook salmon
Coregonus clupeiformis--Common whitefish
Salvelinus fontinalis--Brook trout: speckled trout
Ictalurus punctatus--The speckled catfish
Classes of Fish
Fishes may be roughly classified as (1) fresh water, (2) migratory between fresh and salt water, and (3) marine. Among the families of American fresh-water fishes that are conspicuous on account of their size, abundance, or economic importance, or all of these, there may be mentioned the sturgeons, the catfishes, the suckers, the minnows or carps, the pikes, the killifishes, the trouts, salmons, and whitefishes, the perches, and the basses, and sun fishes.
Migratory Fish
The migratory fishes fall into two groups, the anadromous and the catadtomous. The anadromous fishes pass most of their lives in the sea, run up stream only for the purpose of spawning, and constitute the most valuable of our river fishes. In this group are the shads and the alewives or river herrings, the white perch, the striped bass or rock fish, some {107} of the sturgeons, and the Atlantic salmon, all of which go back to sea after spawning, and the Pacific salmons (five species), all of which die after spawning. Of the catadromous fishes there is a single example in our waters--the common eel. It spends most of its life in the fresh waters and sometimes becomes permanently landlocked there, and runs down to the sea to spawn, laying its eggs off shore in deep water.
Marine Fish
The marine fishes that are found in the coastal waters of the United States number many hundred species, some of them of great value as food. Among the most important are cod, haddock, hake, halibut, Flounder, herring, bluefish, mackeral, weakfish or squeteague, mullet, snapper, drum, and rock fishes.
Perea flavescens--Yellow perch
Pomolobus altivalis--The alewife or river herring
Micropterus salmoides--Large-mouth black bass
Notropis hudsonius--Minnow or shiner
Acipenser oxyrhynchus--The Atlantic sturgeon