UTERMid & North Atlantic fish species: all 13
13 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
4 fish
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.
Reef & bottom
5 fish
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.
Offshore
2 fish
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.
