“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet.”
– William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
You can call it a knob head, sea biscuit or black sea bass. By any name, it’s abundant, delicious and very much appreciated by Long Island anglers. This one was caught aboard the open boat, Miss Montauk.
The Name Game
Shakespeare may have been on the money about flowers, but about fish? Well, now, there’s a question to ponder.
When it comes to piscatorial personification, recognition and classification, I think there may be more to names than Shakespeare opined, but then, he wrote his poetic verse long before the advent of such colorful and descriptive maritime monikers as “Blue Beard” and “Captain Hook.”
Although fish names tend to be fairly descriptive in relation to physical characteristics and habitat preference, they can also be misleading in many instances. Perhaps this is the result of simple human nature influencing the name game. The person providing the original tag generally tries to offer insight as to which characteristic is most notable, but not everyone sees things the same. Thus, a bulldog blackfish to me could be a white chin to you. Many fish are also known by several names based on size or geographic location and, of course, all fish have scientific Latin names. This last point is supposed to eliminate confusion!
SO MANY BLUES…
Consider the bluefish, Pomatomus saltatrix, for example. The common name couldn’t be more obvious or direct – unless, of course, you caught a big blue one sunny afternoon, held it aloft to admire and realized that under certain sunlight conditions this is really a green fish. Hold the same fish aloft at dawn and it might be purple.
“Chopper” is another name for bluefish. My guess is this title was bestowed by an ancient mariner named “Lefty.”
Then there are the dozen or so additional bluefish nicknames such as snapper, gator and cocktail blue. Would you equate a two-pound bluefish with a triangle of cheese-filled phylo bread? Probably not, but I could stretch my imagination to call it an appetizer if I knew eight to 12-pound blues – big enough to feed a family for a week or more – were also on the menu. Harbor blues, based on the propensity of these small blues to stay inside, makes more sense for these two to three-year olds.
Teeth size really seems to be the trait that stands out most when playing the bluefish name game. Thus, snappers for juvenile blues that measure 12 inches or less, snapper blues for fish of 12 inches to about four pounds, choppers for four to ten pounders, gators for 10 to 15 pounds, and gorillas or gorilla-gators for sixteen pounds and up. The latter choices are testament to the size of both the fish and its dentures. Of course, you could opt for the short form and simply call any of these “blues.”
Winter flounder are another species with quite a roll call. Consider the range of sizes from postage stamp fish of six inches or less to snowshoe flounder weighing three pounds or more. In between we use “shorts” for any fish under the current legal limit, blackbacks, keepers and flatties for most legal-sized fish, and yellowtails for big flatties that don’t quite measure up to snowshoe status. Yellowtail flounder, it should be noted, is also the name of another flatfish species, one which lives far offshore. True sole, as in fillet-of, live on the other side of the Atlantic, off the European coast. Technically then, fillet of sole in a local restaurant is unlikely to be a true catch of the day.
Striped bass seem to be aptly named. They are also called linesiders, stripers and rockfish. The meaning of the first three names is obvious, the latter refers to the bass’s love of hard habitat. Large bass are called cows, understandable when you consider their appearance and that male stripers rarely exceed 20 pounds.
WEAKFISH AREN’T
A few fish names are sharp and to the point – witness swordfish, needlefish or the generic name for all fish big and pointy: billfish.
On the other hand, some names have hidden meaning. The triggerfish is so called because its lead dorsal ray can be locked straight-up in the span of a millisecond. When a triggerfish takes your bait, it dives into a rocky haunt and triggers this fin response to wedge itself in some underwater, snag-infested lair. Try as you might, you can’t budge that fish once the trigger has been pulled – but you can slacken your line to fool the fish, waiting for it to release the trigger and swim free of the snag.
Some fish names are accurate, but just don’t seem to be the best possible choice for the species identified. Bonefish is self-explanatory, but “super fast fish” might elicit a more positive response. Bigeye tuna is fair, but “back-break tuna” might be better, as any angler who has battled one of these bruisers would attest. Sailfish is cool, although “crazy, neon jumping fish” would leave no doubt as to the maniac at the end of your line.
Continuing the same trend of thought, the name weakfish pays homage to the soft mouth tissue of this species, which allows the hook to tear free when an angler exerts too much pressure. It has nothing to do with the ability of these trout look-alikes to peel drag from an angler’s reel. Larger weaks are called yellowfins and tiderunners, the later noting the propensity of the biggest weaks to follow flooding tides up onto the flats and receding tides back to the channels. School weaks and bay weaks are simply weakfish of four pounds or less. These have a tendency to group tightly and invade shallow waters. Larger weaks seem to travel in pods as opposed to schools, probably because there are simply fewer of them around.
Depending on where you live, weakfish are also called grey seatrout, and squeteague. Speckled seatrout, the name for the weakfish’s southern counterpart, which cruises as far north as Cape May, seems much more accurate than weakfish; northern seatrout would work for me.
THAT’S A COMPLIMENT?
There are many other fish names that strike me as not quite right. Whiting are sliver, red hake are brown, big groupers are loners, permit require no license, and wolfish look like toads. A roosterfish sounds like something you give away to a farmer living across town, and halibut was obviously intended to be the butt of fishing jokes for all eternity. As for Wahoo, this name describes the sound made by an angler setting the hook, not the fish powering away from the boat.
Only in the fish world could a “humpbacked” porgy be a trophy, a bulldog be a large, female blackfish, or a doormat describe one of the most prized sport and food fish to be found along the East Coast. Big fluke, also known as summer flounder, may look like doormats, but they fight like freight trains and taste fantastic. I would never consider wiping my feet on such a prize.
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