The Bluefish Species
Boston Fish House Recipes, 1940s
Bluefish is one of the most desirable of sea fishes. It is moderately stout bodied, about one-fourth deep as long; its belly flat sided, but blunt edged below; its head deep; its nose moderately pointed, and its mouth large and oblique with projecting lower jaw. Its color is deep bluish above, more or less tinged with green; and silvery below.
The weight of the bluefish varies from 1 to 12 pounds. A one pound fish is about 12 inches; a two-pounder about 14 inches; a four-pounder will run two feet long. Bluefish as you buy it, with entrails removed, will run nearly fifty per cent refuse. The favorite way of serving bluefish is broiled with maitre d'hotel butter but is also an excellent baking fish.
Bluefish travel in schools, mostly near the surface, and are perhaps the most ferocious fish in the sea, leaving in their wake a trail of dead and mangled mackerel, menhaden, herring, alewives, etc., on all of which they prey.
They are creatures of warm water. In the years when they pass Cape Cod they usually appear in Massachusetts Bay about the middle (sometimes as early as the first) of June, and are seen off and on all summer. Most of them depart late in September, but an occasional fish lingers into late autumn. While their spawning grounds are still to be discovered, it is not likely that they spawn in inshore waters along the New England coast, and though they may do so along the shores of the Middle and South Atlantic States, we incline to the view now generally held that the chief production of eggs takes place out at sea before the fish appear on the coast. Large numbers are caught during the summer months with nets, traps, seines and hand lines.
In colonial times bluefish were plentiful off southern New England and around Nantucket, but they seem to have disappeared thence about 1764, to reappear about 1810. From that time on they increased in abundance west and south of Cape Cod. Bluefish have never appeared in any numbers north of Boston since 1889, in which year they were reported common as far north as Mount Desert, but considerable numbers were taken along the inner as well as the outer shores of Cape Cod until 1897, a season when the traps on its east and west sides accounted for about 9,000 pounds.
Our native bluefish, known everywhere for their delicious flavor and tenderness, present a very curious saga of scarcity and abundance. Some years they are taken in great numbers all along our Atlantic seaboard, while in intervening years they present an aspect of almost being depleted. The presence or absence of bluefish activity is a matter of direct importance to other fisheries, due to the fact that large schools of bluefish will scatter and destroy great numbers of small mackerel, butterfish, herring or whatever other types of small fish may be in the vicinity.
As an article of seafood it is exceedingly tasty, rich and juicy, and may be prepared in many different ways. The average bluefish when plentiful will run from two to five pounds each, although they have been known to weigh as much as twelve to fifteen pounds. Their general range is along the entire eastern seaboard from Florida to Maine, but the finest and firmest are caught in the waters on our Cape Cod.
