UTERFish species, coast to coast: all 215, with the rule for each
215 species — inshore, surf, reef, offshore, sharks, fresh water, and the bait. What each one is, what it eats, how to fish it, the live bait for it, what it's worth in the book, and the rule — with the date the rule was checked.
The points scale
rarity and size; bait scores nothingA catch scores the fish's base points times how many, up to double again for a trophy-size fish photographed on a ruler, plus ten for a photo and fifty for the first of a species in your book.
Inshore
43 fish
Snook
The linesider: a black lateral line, a sloped head and a jaw that will cut your leader if you go light.
Redfish
The red drum: a copper back, a black spot at the tail, and a mouth built for the bottom.
Spotted seatrout
The spotted seatrout: soft mouth, two fangs, spots on a silver side.
Tarpon
The silver king.
Sheepshead
The convict fish: black bars and a mouth full of human-looking teeth for crushing barnacles and crabs.
Flounder
The Gulf flounder: flat, both eyes up, buried in the sand at a drop-off waiting for something to swim by.
Spanish mackerel
The Spanish mackerel: gold spots, a mouth of needles and a run in the spring and fall that fills every pass and beach with them.
Cobia
The ling, the lemonfish: a brown torpedo that looks like a shark from the tower and rides the backs of rays and turtles.
Tripletail
The tripletail: a brown leaf that floats on its side under a crab-trap float or a channel marker, pretending to be flotsam.
Black drum
The black drum: a redfish's ugly cousin, barred as a juvenile, a hundred pounds as an adult, grunting under the bridges.
Jack crevalle
The jack crevalle: the strongest fish for its size in the water, hunting in packs that blow up bait on the surface.
Bonefish
The gray ghost of the flats: a silver fish that tails in a foot of water and runs a hundred yards on the first go.
Permit
The permit: a pompano the size of a dinner plate with a black sickle tail, the hardest fish on the flats to feed and a wreck fish that spawns on the nearshore wrecks in spring..
Ladyfish
The poor man's tarpon: a silver, jumping, tackle-slinging fish that shows up in schools wherever bait is and saves a slow day.
Bluefish
A pack of teeth that arrives with the first cold fronts and blitzes bait in the passes and off the piers.
Cero mackerel
The Spanish mackerel's prettier South Florida cousin: a gold stripe down the side over the spots, on the patch reefs and edges of the Keys and Biscayne all year..
Great barracuda
The wolf of the flats and the reef: a long silver torpedo that follows the boat, sits under the markers and hits a tube lure at a speed that makes people drop the rod.
Lookdown
A silver plate with a straight face, hunting shrimp and glass minnows under the dock lights at night.
Sand seatrout
The spotted seatrout's plain cousin, in the deeper channels and passes of the Gulf bays, in schools that fill a cooler.
Striped mullet
The fish the whole coast runs on: the bait everything eats and, smoked, the Florida dish.
Gafftopsail catfish
The sail cat: a sleek, slimy, hard-pulling catfish with a dorsal like a sail and venomous spines.
Hardhead catfish
The fish everyone catches and nobody wants: the bait thief of every dock and channel, with spines that mean it.
Atlantic croaker
The drum that croaks in your hand: a good pan fish from the bays and creeks, and the live bait the big trout and redfish in Texas and the Panhandle are caught on..
Weakfish (gray trout)
The gray trout of the First Coast: the spotted seatrout's bigger northern cousin, in the deeper channels and inlets of Northeast Florida in the cool months.
Silver seatrout
The smallest seatrout: a silver, spotless little fish in the surf and the passes, in schools, that fills a bucket on a shrimp and a light rod.
Silver perch
The little croaking drum of the grass flats and the docks, the bait stealer with a yellow fin, and a fine pan fish if you keep enough.
Spot
A small drum with a spot on its shoulder, in the fall runs off the piers and in the channels of North Florida, caught by the dozen on bloodworms and shrimp.
Southern stingray
The big brown ray of the flats and the surf, a hundred pounds across in the passes, that takes a bottom bait meant for a redfish and tows the boat.
Atlantic cutlassfish (ribbonfish)
A silver ribbon of teeth that swarms the piers, jetties and lighted platforms from Texas to the Carolinas in late summer.
Summer flounder (fluke)
The fluke: the Northeast's flatfish, ambushing bait on the sand from Virginia to Cape Cod all summer.
White perch
The Chesapeake's pan fish: a little cousin of the striper in every tidal river and creek, running up to spawn in March and schooling on the points and oyster bars all summer.
Atlantic mackerel
The striped mackerel of the North Atlantic: in from the shelf every spring, off every Maine dock all summer, and the live bait every big striper and bluefin is caught on..
Winter flounder
The blackback: the small-mouthed flatfish that comes into the harbors and salt ponds to spawn in winter and feeds there in the cold spring — the first fish of the year from New Jersey to Maine.
Sockeye (red) salmon
The red: a plankton-eater that rarely bites a lure in the ocean, then pours into Alaska's river mouths by the million in July.
Pink (humpy) salmon
The humpy: the smallest and most numerous salmon, on a strict two-year cycle — Puget Sound gets millions in odd years and almost none in even years; Alaska gets them every summer.
Chum (dog) salmon
The dog salmon: a big, calico-barred, hard-pulling fish with a mouth full of teeth, late in the year in Puget Sound and Hood Canal and summer in Alaska's terminal areas.
Steelhead
The sea-run rainbow trout: chrome-bright from the ocean, running the coastal rivers from California to Alaska in winter (and some in summer).
California halibut
The flatfish of the Southern California bays and beaches and San Francisco Bay: a big-toothed ambusher on the sand that moves shallow to spawn in spring and summer.
Pacific bonito
A small, striped tuna-cousin that boils on the bait off the Southern California harbors and breakwaters all summer — great fun on light gear and good bait..
Pacific barracuda
A slim, schooling spring-and-summer barracuda that moves up from Baja to the Southern California kelp and beaches with the warming water.
White sturgeon
A living dinosaur — North America's largest freshwater fish, feeding in San Francisco Bay and the Columbia estuary.
Giant trevally (ulua)
The ulua: Hawaii's shoreline king, a reef-crushing jack fished at night off the lava ledges on slide-bait rigs and heavy gear.
Bluefin trevally (omilu)
The omilu: the electric-blue papio of the reef flats and surf zones, hunting in packs and hitting plugs and flies at dawn and dusk..
Surf
5 fish
Pompano
The pompano: gold and silver, a forked tail, and the best eating fish in the surf.
Whiting
The whiting, the kingfish of the surf: a small, silver, delicious fish on every beach, the one that saves the day when the pompano are not there..
Palometa
The pompano's long-finned Keys cousin: a small silver fish with black-edged fins that hunts the surf line and the flats' edges in South Florida and the islands.
California corbina
The gray ghost of the Southern California surf: a whiting-cousin that tails in a foot of water for sand crabs on summer high tides.
Surfperch
The surf fish of the Pacific beaches — barred surfperch in California, redtails from Humboldt to Washington.
Reef & bottom
52 fish
Mangrove snapper
The gray snapper: red-brown, a dark stripe through the eye, and the sharpest eyes on the reef.
Gag grouper
The gag grouper: the shallow-water grouper of the Gulf, on rock piles and ledges in ten feet of water on the Big Bend and deeper elsewhere.
Yellowtail snapper
The yellowtail snapper: a yellow stripe and a forked yellow tail, on the reef and the patches from Biscayne down, best at night in a chum slick..
Lane snapper
Pink with yellow stripes and a black spot, on every patch of hard bottom and grass edge in the Gulf and the Keys.
Mutton snapper
The smartest snapper on the reef: olive and salmon with a black spot, spooky in clear water, and the best-eating fish in the Keys by many votes.
Red snapper
The Gulf's famous fish: red as a fire truck, thick as a football, on every reef and wreck from 60 feet out.
Vermilion snapper
The beeliner: a slim, bright-red snapper in big schools over the deeper reefs, the fish that fills the box when the red snapper are closed.
Cubera snapper
The biggest snapper in the sea — a hundred pounds of teeth and attitude on the deep wrecks off the Keys and Palm Beach, spawning on the summer full moons.
Red grouper
The Gulf's bread-and-butter grouper: a rusty, mottled fish that digs its own hole in the flat hard bottom and sits in it, in 40 to 300 feet.
Black grouper
The big grouper of the Keys and the South Florida reefs: dark, brassy-spotted, up to a hundred pounds, on the reef edge and the wrecks.
Scamp
The best-eating grouper in the Gulf, and the one the old-timers keep quiet about: a tan, dotted fish with a broom tail on the deeper ledges.
Goliath grouper
The giant: five hundred pounds of grouper on the wrecks, under the bridges, in the passes, eating whatever you're reeling in.
Hogfish
The hog snapper: a pig-nosed wrasse the divers spear, and the finest-eating fish on the reef.
Greater amberjack
The reef donkey: fifty to a hundred pounds of pure pull stacked over every deep wreck and tower, waiting to hurt your back.
Almaco jack
The amberjack's deeper-bodied cousin, on the same wrecks and towers, better on the plate.
Black sea bass
A black, bass-shaped fish on the nearshore reefs of North Florida in winter, in numbers, with a sweet white fillet.
Gray triggerfish
A leathery gray fish with a locking dorsal spine and teeth that steal bait like a dentist.
White grunt
Grits and grunts: the fish of the Gulf reef dinner.
Jolthead porgy
The porgies — jolthead, knobbed, littlehead — are the silver, humpbacked pan fish of the reef, a sheepshead's offshore cousins, and very good eating..
Atlantic spadefish
Black-and-silver striped discs schooling in the hundreds over the wrecks and around the markers and buoys in summer.
African pompano
A mirror with fins: a big, flat, silver jack with trailing threads, on the deep wrecks off Southeast Florida and the Keys.
Golden tilefish
The deep-drop prize: a gold-spotted fish that lives in burrows in the mud in 500 to 900 feet, tastes like lobster, and comes up on an electric reel.
Snowy grouper
The white-spotted grouper of the deep ledges beyond 400 feet, the best-eating of the deep-water groupers, and a rare fish in the book because of where it lives..
Horse-eye jack
The big-eyed jack of the wrecks, the bridges and the reef edge at night, in schools that hit a jig like a crevalle and pull nearly as hard.
Bar jack
The blue-striped jack of the Keys reefs and flats: a bright, fast, eating-size jack that follows the rays and hits a small jig on sight.
Yellow jack
The yellow-finned jack of the Keys and the deep flats, mistaken for a permit at distance, and the best-eating jack in Florida — raw, on the boat, with a lime..
Sand perch
The squirrelfish: a striped little sea bass on the sand and the hard bottom in 20 to 100 feet that eats every bait meant for a grouper, and is itself the grouper bait the old-timers keep..
Schoolmaster snapper
The yellow-finned snapper of the Keys mangroves and patch reefs, in schools under every overhang, that eats a shrimp on sight and grows to a couple of pounds.
Dog snapper
The canine-toothed snapper of the deeper Keys reefs and the Miami bridges at night: a bronze, fanged brute to twenty pounds that a mutton fisherman meets by surprise..
Mahogany snapper
The big-eyed, red-finned little snapper of the Keys reefs, in the chum slick with the yellowtails and the lanes.
Silk snapper
The yellow-eyed red snapper of the deep ledges beyond 300 feet off the Keys and Southeast Florida, caught on the deep drop with the queens and the blacklines.
Blackfin snapper
A red snapper with a black spot at the base of the pectoral fin, on the deep reef edge and the ledges in 200 to 500 feet off South Florida.
Queen snapper
The scarlet, huge-eyed, forked-tail snapper of the deep — 600 to 1,200 feet off the Keys and Palm Beach — the prettiest fish that comes up a deep-drop line and among the best to eat..
Yellowedge grouper
The yellow-edged grouper of the deep mud and ledges in 400 to 900 feet, the everyday catch of the Gulf deep-drop boats, and as good to eat as any grouper there is..
Warsaw grouper
The giant of the deep ledges: a four-hundred-pound black grouper of the abyss with a second dorsal spine like a mast, on the deep wrecks and rock in 300 to 1,000 feet.
Red hind (strawberry grouper)
The strawberry grouper: a small red-spotted grouper on every Keys patch reef that eats a shrimp on a knocker rig and makes an excellent sandwich.
Nassau grouper
The barred grouper of the Keys reefs that was once everywhere and is now rare and protected everywhere it lives.
Blueline tilefish
The gray tilefish of the deep rock and rubble in 250 to 600 feet, caught with the snowies and the yellowedge on the deep drop, and excellent eating..
Banded rudderfish
The small amberjack of the nearshore wrecks and the markers, banded as a juvenile, ten pounds as an adult, and much better eating than its big cousin.
Red porgy (pinkie)
The pink, blue-flecked porgy of the Carolina and Georgia offshore ledges — a 'pinkie' or 'silver snapper' that comes up with the beeliners and the grunts.
Scup (porgy)
The Northeast porgy: a silver, hump-backed pan fish that fills the rock piles, piers and wrecks from New Jersey to Cape Cod all summer.
Tautog (blackfish)
The blackfish: a thick, rubber-lipped wrasse living in the rocks and wrecks from Virginia to Cape Cod, crushing crabs with a mouth full of teeth.
Atlantic cod
The fish that built New England: once in every party boat's box, now a short and tightly managed season on the Gulf of Maine ledges and the winter wrecks off Rhode Island.
Haddock
The fish-and-chips fish: a smaller cod relative with a black thumbprint on the shoulder, schooling on the Gulf of Maine ledges in numbers since the stock came back.
Pollock
The hardest-pulling fish on the Gulf of Maine ledges: a green-backed cod cousin that hits a jig on the drop and fights all the way up.
Pacific halibut
The barn door: a flatfish that grows past 300 pounds on the gravel banks from northern California to the Bering Sea.
Lingcod
Not a cod: a toothy, green-fleshed rock predator of the whole West Coast and Alaska, the reef fish everyone wants.
Rockfish
Dozens of species — black, blue, vermilion, copper, canary, yelloweye — on every reef from San Diego to Kodiak, the backbone of the West Coast half-day boat.
Cabezon
A big-headed, mottled sculpin of the shallow rocks and tide pools from central California to Washington.
Kelp (calico) bass
The calico: Southern California's kelp-forest bass, the fish the half-day boats and kayakers live on from Point Loma to Santa Barbara.
Barred sand bass
The kelp bass's sand-flat cousin: schooling in the thousands to spawn on Huntington Flats and the Silver Strand every summer — the classic Southern California summer bite..
White seabass
The ghost of the kelp: a big croaker that follows the spring squid spawn into the kelp beds of Southern California and the Channel Islands.
Offshore
21 fish
King mackerel
The king mackerel: the Spanish's big brother, forty pounds of teeth that smoke a reel.
Mahi-mahi (dolphin)
The fish of the weedlines: green, gold and electric blue, under every floating thing in the Gulf Stream and the deep Gulf from spring to fall, and the best fish for the grill in the sea..
Wahoo
The fastest thing with fins: a striped, razor-toothed torpedo that hits a trolled lure at sixty miles an hour and empties the reel.
Blackfin tuna
The small tuna of the Gulf Stream and the deep Gulf rigs: black on top, a gold stripe, twenty to forty pounds of speed on the humps at dawn.
Yellowfin tuna
The big tuna: a hundred pounds and more, on the deepwater oil rigs off the Panhandle and the far edge of the Gulf Stream.
Sailfish
Florida's fish: the sail raised on the edge of the Gulf Stream off Palm Beach, Stuart and the Keys on a north wind in winter, tail-walking on a kite bait.
Swordfish
The broadbill: fished by daytime deep-drop in 1,500 feet off South Florida, or on the surface at night — a fish of the abyss that fights for hours and is the hardest fish in the book to put your name on..
Blue marlin
The biggest game fish there is — a thousand pounds of blue water — on the deep Gulf rigs and the Stream in summer.
White marlin
The small, smart marlin of the Gulf edge and the Stream in summer: sixty to eighty pounds, round-tipped fins, lit up neon behind the ballyhoo.
Little tunny (bonito)
The bonito: the striped, blitzing little tuna on the beaches and reefs, the fastest pull an inshore rod ever sees, and the bait for everything offshore.
Rainbow runner
A striped blue-and-yellow torpedo of a jack on the weedlines and the reef edge in summer, faster than it looks, and good on the grill.
Atlantic bonito
The striped bonito of the winter beaches and nearshore reefs off Northeast Florida and the Panhandle — a real bonito, unlike the little tunny, and good eating bled and iced..
Skipjack tuna
The striped-belly tuna of the deep Gulf and the Stream, in fast schools under the birds with the blackfins, and the best marlin bait alive.
Bigeye tuna
The deep-swimming tuna of the far edge and the canyons, two hundred pounds, caught at dawn and dusk on the deep Gulf rigs and beyond the Stream.
Longbill spearfish
The rarest billfish in the Atlantic: a small, slender, short-billed cousin of the marlins that turns up once in a career behind a ballyhoo on the edge.
Albacore (longfin tuna)
The longfin: a canyon tuna with pectoral fins like wings, white meat, and a run that strips a reel.
Atlantic bluefin tuna
The giant: the biggest tuna in the sea, a thousand pounds on Stellwagen Bank and off Cape Cod in the fall, with school fish on every inshore lump from Virginia to Maine.
Chinook (king) salmon
The king: the biggest Pacific salmon, black-gummed, spotted on both tail lobes, feeding on herring and anchovy in the ocean from Monterey to Kodiak before it runs home to its river.
Coho (silver) salmon
The silver: an acrobat that hits fast-trolled lures near the surface all summer and floods the bays and river mouths in the fall from Oregon to Kodiak.
Pacific yellowtail
The California yellowtail: a hard-pulling jack that runs for the kelp and the rocks the second it's hooked — the fish of the islands, the Coronados and the kelp paddies.
Striped marlin
The billfish of the Southern California late summer and the Hawaiian winter, tailing on the surface where you can pitch to it.
Sharks
20 fish
Blacktip shark
The shark that jumps: five feet of grey muscle spinning clear of the water on the beaches and flats from spring to fall.
Spinner shark
The blacktip's bigger, higher-jumping twin: the shark that corkscrews ten feet out of the water on the beaches in spring, chasing the mullet and the bait pods..
Bull shark
The heavyweight of the inshore water: a thick, blunt, brown shark of the passes, the rivers and the bridges that eats tarpon off the hook and pulls like a truck.
Lemon shark
The yellow-brown shark of the flats and mangrove channels of South Florida and the Keys, up to ten feet, sight-fished in two feet of water with a fly or a bait.
Bonnethead shark
The little hammerhead of the grass flats: a shovel-headed, three-foot shark that eats crabs and shrimp, runs like a bonefish on light tackle, and is the first shark most kids catch..
Nurse shark
The sleepy brown shark under the ledges of the Keys and the reefs, up to ten feet, that sucks a bait off the bottom and then sits down like a wet sandbag.
Scalloped hammerhead
The hammerhead of the passes in tarpon season, following the schools and the boats.
Great hammerhead
The biggest hammerhead — fourteen feet, a thousand pounds — cruising the beaches and passes of Southwest Florida and the Keys behind the tarpon and the rays.
Tiger shark
The striped giant of the beaches and the reef edge: twelve feet, the mouth of a garbage disposal, and the one the land-based shark anglers dream about all winter.
Sandbar shark
The tall-finned brown shark of the winter beaches, the one the surf anglers catch off the Panhandle and the East Coast when the water cools.
Atlantic sharpnose shark
The little spotted shark of the surf and the passes, three feet long, that steals the pompano bait and fights well on light tackle.
Blacknose shark
A small, fast, four-foot shark with a smudge on the nose, on the beaches and nearshore reefs in the warm months.
Shortfin mako
The fastest shark in the sea, cobalt blue, on the edge of the Gulf Stream in winter behind the kingfish and the bonito.
Finetooth shark
A slim, fast, five-foot shark of the beaches and the bays in the warm months, in schools chasing the menhaden, and the one most often mistaken for a blacktip on the pier..
Caribbean reef shark
The grey shark of the Keys reef edge that comes to the chum slick and steals the yellowtail off the hook — eight feet, thick, and a serious fight on the reef tackle it usually eats..
Silky shark
The smooth-skinned shark of the blue water, under every weedline and around the deep rigs with the tuna, that eats the hooked blackfin on the way up.
Common thresher
The shark with a tail as long as its body, that herds bait and stuns it with a whip — a rare winter fish on the edge off Florida, hooked in the tail as often as the mouth, and a spectacular jumper..
Dusky shark
A big, slow-growing grey shark of the beaches and the shelf in the cool months, twelve feet and protected in every water it swims.
Sand tiger shark
The ragged-toothed shark that hangs motionless over the North Carolina wrecks — the one in every aquarium.
Blue shark
The long, cobalt-blue shark of the cool open ocean — the bread-and-butter of every Northeast shark trip, coming up the chum slick in numbers from Delaware to the Gulf of Maine.
Fresh water
53 fish
Largemouth bass
Florida's fish in fresh water: the Florida-strain largemouth that grows to fourteen pounds in the lakes and the phosphate pits, and the reason Okeechobee and the Kissimmee chain are famous.
Peacock bass
The butterfly peacock: a South American brawler stocked in the Miami canals in the '80s, gold and black-barred, that hits a jerkbait like a train and jumps.
Bluegill
The bream: the fish every Florida kid catches first, on a cane pole and a cricket, and the fish the grandparents fry on a Saturday.
Redear sunfish (shellcracker)
The bluegill's bigger, red-eared cousin that eats snails off the bottom and grows to two pounds in the lakes of Central Florida.
Black crappie (speck)
The speckled perch: the winter fish of the big lakes — Okeechobee, Kissimmee, the St.
Channel catfish
The everyday catfish of the rivers and lakes, spotted and forked-tailed, on the bottom at night on anything that smells.
Blue catfish
The big river catfish of the Panhandle — the Escambia, the Apalachicola, the Choctawhatchee — fifty pounds and more in the deep bends.
Flathead catfish
The predator catfish: yellow-brown, flat-headed, sixty pounds in the log jams of the Panhandle rivers, and it only eats live fish.
Striped bass
The striper of the St.
Bowfin (mudfish)
The mudfish: a living fossil with a long dorsal fin and a mouthful of teeth in every swamp and slough, that hits a bass lure like a bull and fights dirty.
Florida gar
The armored, needle-nosed fish rolling at the surface of every canal and lake, that bites everything and hooks nothing — a rope lure that tangles in its teeth is the trick.
Bullseye snakehead
The invader of the Broward canals: a mottled, air-breathing predator with a bullseye on the tail that explodes on a frog in the weeds.
Chain pickerel
Florida's little pike: a chain-patterned, duckbilled ambusher in the weedy lakes and rivers of North and Central Florida, that hits a spinnerbait from nowhere.
Suwannee bass
Florida's own bass: a small, blue-bellied bass found only in the Suwannee, Santa Fe, Ochlockonee and Wacissa rivers, on the rocky shoals and the spring runs.
Shoal bass
The river bass of the Apalachicola and the Chipola in the Panhandle, a bronze fighter of the rocky shoals and the current that hits a topwater like a smallmouth.
Hybrid striped bass (sunshine)
The hatchery hybrid of striped and white bass, stocked in the big lakes and rivers, schooling in the open water and under the bridges at dawn, and a hard fight on light tackle..
Warmouth
The big-mouthed, mottled sunfish of the swampy edges and the stumps, that eats a bass lure meant for something bigger.
Redbreast sunfish
The river bream of the Panhandle and North Florida rivers — the Suwannee, the Ochlockonee — orange-bellied and hard-fighting on a fly rod or a cane pole along the sand bars..
Spotted sunfish (stumpknocker)
The stumpknocker: a small, dark, dotted sunfish in every Florida creek and river, tight to the wood, that hits a bug as it lands.
White catfish
The catfish of the lakes and the brackish rivers of Florida — the St.
Brown bullhead
The mudcat: the small, mottled, square-tailed catfish of every pond and canal, that takes a worm on the bottom at night and is better eating than its home suggests..
American shad
The poor man's tarpon of the St.
Mayan cichlid
The orange-and-barred cichlid of the South Florida canals and the Everglades, an invader that fights like a bluegill twice its size and eats well.
Oscar
The aquarium fish gone wild: a thick, dark cichlid with an eyespot on the tail in the Everglades canals, that hits a beetle spin like a bass and is surprisingly good to eat..
Clown knifefish
The strangest fish in Florida: a three-foot, silver, knife-shaped Asian invader with spots along its belly, in the lakes of Palm Beach County, that takes a live shiner at night.
Blue tilapia
The invader in every Florida pond, lake and canal: a big, blue-gray, vegetarian cichlid that ignores lures and fills a cast net or a bowfishing arrow.
Smallmouth bass
The bronzeback: a bronze, red-eyed, tail-walking bass of clear rocky water — the rivers of the Ozarks and Appalachia, the TVA lakes, the Great Lakes shoals.
Spotted bass (Kentucky bass)
The spot: the bass of the deep, clear Southern reservoirs and the Ohio basin rivers — rows of dark spots below the lateral line, a tooth patch on the tongue, and a habit of schooling deeper than its cousins.
Guadalupe bass
The state fish of Texas: a small, green, spotted black bass found nowhere else on earth but the clear spring-fed rivers of the Hill Country — the Llano, the Pedernales, the Blanco, the San Marcos.
Redeye bass
The little bass of the Southern Appalachian creeks — bronze, red-eyed, white-edged on the tail — in the clear, cool streams of the Coosa and Savannah basins.
Yellow perch
The ringed perch: gold with dark saddles, schooled by the thousand over the weed flats and the mud of the northern lakes and the Great Lakes, and the fish behind half the ice shanties and fish fries of the Midwest.
Walleye
The marble-eyed perch of the North: a night feeder with glassy eyes that see in the dark, schooled on the rock reefs and the river runs from Lake Erie to the Missouri reservoirs and south in the TVA mountain lakes.
Sauger
The walleye's smaller, blotchier river cousin, built for the big, muddy, moving water of the Tennessee, the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri — and the fish that keeps the tailwaters busy all winter..
Northern pike
The water wolf: a long, green, duck-billed ambusher of the northern weed beds, with a mouth full of teeth and a habit of hitting anything that moves.
Muskellunge (muskie)
The fish of ten thousand casts: the biggest of the pike family, fifty inches of barred or spotted fury in the clear lakes of Wisconsin and Minnesota, Lake St.
White bass
The sand bass: a silver, striped, shad-chasing schooler that runs up the rivers by the thousand every spring to spawn — the Texas rivers in February, the Wolf in May — and boils on the surface of the big lakes all summer.
Rainbow trout
The trout everybody knows: pink-striped, spotted, jumping, stocked in every cold river, tailwater and city pond in the country and wild in the West and Alaska.
Brown trout
The wary one: a butter-yellow, red-spotted European trout gone native in the limestone creeks, the Rocky Mountain rivers and the Ozark tailwaters, where it grows to thirty pounds on sculpins and small trout.
Brook trout
The brookie: the native char of the Appalachians and the North Woods, olive-wormed, red-spotted and orange-bellied, in the coldest, cleanest headwaters there are.
Cutthroat trout
The native trout of the Rockies and the Great Basin, slashed red under the jaw: Yellowstone and Snake River fine-spotted cutts that rise to anything, westslopes in Montana's mountain rivers, and Pyramid Lake's giant Lahontans..
Lake trout (mackinaw, togue)
The char of the deep, cold lakes — Superior, the Finger Lakes, Flathead, Flaming Gorge, Tahoe, the Alaska interior — grey and cream-spotted, slow-growing and long-lived.
Kokanee salmon
The landlocked sockeye of the western reservoirs — silver, schooling, soft-mouthed plankton eaters that turn red and hump-backed when they run the tributaries in fall.
Arctic grayling
The sailfin of the North: a silver-violet, purple-spotted fish with a dorsal fin like a flag, rising to dry flies in Alaska's clear creeks and in a few high lakes of the Rockies.
Landlocked Atlantic salmon
The landlocked Atlantic of Maine's big lakes — Sebago, West Grand, Moosehead — and New Hampshire, Vermont and New York: a leaping, smelt-eating salmon that follows the ice-out smelt run into the river mouths.
Lake whitefish
The silver, small-mouthed whitefish of the Great Lakes — the commercial fish of the upper lakes for two centuries and an ice-fishing favorite on Green Bay, Bays de Noc and Chequamegon Bay.
Burbot (eelpout, ling, cusk)
The only freshwater cod: a slimy, eel-tailed, chin-barbeled night fish that spawns in writhing balls under the ice in February.
Freshwater drum (sheepshead)
The grunting silver drum of the big rivers and Lake Erie — a hard-pulling, mussel-crunching fish the Midwest calls sheepshead, and the bonus fish on every walleye trip..
Common carp
The golden ghost of the flats: introduced everywhere, scorned by most, and one of the hardest-pulling fish in fresh water.
Longnose gar
The needle-nosed gar of the eastern and central rivers — an armored, prehistoric, surface-rolling predator that hangs motionless in the summer sun and is nearly impossible to hook..
Alligator gar
The giant of the Gulf rivers: eight feet and two hundred pounds of double-toothed, armored fish in the Trinity, the Atchafalaya and the Red.
Paddlefish (spoonbill)
The spoonbill: a plankton-straining, paddle-snouted relic of the Missouri and Mississippi basins that never bites — it is snagged, in short spring seasons, when it runs upriver to spawn below the dams.
Lake sturgeon
The ancient sturgeon of the Great Lakes basin and the North — a century old, a hundred pounds and more — protected nearly everywhere, but speared through the ice on Lake Winnebago in February and caught-and-released on the Rainy River in spring..
Northern snakehead
The invader of the Potomac: a long, blotched, air-breathing predator from Asia now established in the tidal Potomac, the Chesapeake tributaries and around Philadelphia.
Bait
in the book, no points
Grass shrimp
The inch-long clear shrimp in the grass of every brackish creek and freshwater edge, netted by the hundred and the best bait for bream, crappie, sheepshead and mangrove snapper that no shop sells..
Flying fish
The gliders of the Gulf Stream, the tuna and marlin's dinner, dipped at night under a light and rigged whole to troll — or bought frozen from the shop..
Speedo (redtail scad)
The red-tailed scad of the Keys reefs, the kite bait that sailfish, kingfish and blackfin cannot leave alone, and hard to come by on the days it matters most..
American eel
The live eel: a snake of a bait from the brackish creeks and the bait shop coolers, that a cobia will leave a ray for.
Pinfish
The striped, spiny, bait-stealing perch of every grass flat and dock in Florida — and the hardiest live bait there is, for snook, grouper, cobia and everything else..
Scaled sardine (pilchard, whitebait)
Whitebait: the small silver sardine that everything inshore eats, and the bait that turned Tampa Bay snook fishing into a sport.
Threadfin herring (greenback)
The greenback: a bright, fragile herring with a long trailing ray on the dorsal, on the markers and the beaches in big schools.
Spanish sardine
The bigger, rounder sardine of the passes and the nearshore reefs, tougher on the hook than a threadfin and the bait the mackerel and kings are following..
Cigar minnow (round scad)
A slim, tough scad stacked over the reefs and wrecks, the grouper and snapper bait of the Gulf, and the one that survives a long drop..
Blue runner (hardtail)
The hardtail: a small, tough jack on every marker, buoy and reef, that bites a bare Sabiki hook and lives all day in the well.
Goggle-eye (bigeye scad)
The big-eyed scad of the South Florida bridges at night: the sailfish bait, worth its weight in the winter, sold by the dozen at the marinas at dawn..
Ballyhoo
The halfbeak: the long-jawed silver bait skittering over the reef in schools, that every offshore boat in Florida trolls behind it.
Menhaden (pogy)
The pogy: an oily, flipping herring in huge schools along the beaches and in the bays, that fills a livewell with one throw of a big net and smells like the whole ocean..
Mud minnow (Gulf killifish)
The killifish of the tidal creeks and ditches: a thumb-sized, unkillable bait that lives for days in a bucket and catches every flounder in the creek..
Pigfish
The grunting grass-flat perch that a gator trout will cross a flat for.
Glass minnow (bay anchovy)
The translucent anchovy in the dimpling clouds on the bays and beaches, more chum than bait, and the thing the Spanish and the ladyfish are blitzing when you see the birds..
Shrimp
The universal bait: the white, brown and pink shrimp of the bays, sold live by the dozen at every bait shop and netted by the bucket under a light on the winter runs..
Squid
The bottom-fishing bait that never comes off the hook: frozen in a box from the shop, or jigged at night under a light in the winter around the passes and the bridges..
Sand flea (mole crab)
The mole crab of the surf line, the size of a thumb, that pompano and whiting root out of the wash, and that the surf anglers rake up by the dozen at low tide..
Fiddler crab
The little one-clawed crab waving on the mud at low tide, the sheepshead's favourite meal, and the bait to bring to any bridge in February..
Blue crab
The blue crab: dinner from a trap in the bay, and cut in halves the best bottom bait there is for black drum, redfish and cobia; small and whole, the permit and tarpon bait..