On the Line

One Fish, Two Fish Grammar
By Mike Conner, editor-in-chief

Maybe I am thinking too much, but as a fish mag editor I obsess over the following:
Is it snapper or snappers when referring to more than one snapper? When do you add the "s" and when do you go without it?

Wait, don't laugh yet. Consider that there is no firm rule, and what sounds right to you may not jive with your fellow angler.  The English language is a mess in general, and inconsistent at best as far as usage.

Whenever an old fishing buddy would tell me that he caught five "snooks" on fly, or on lures, whatever the case, I would roar with laughter."You mean SNOOK!"  Five SNOOK. Snook is both singular and plural," I would explain. "And you say there were a dozen TARPON in that school. Not a dozen TARPONS. You follow?"

He responded with, "What about pilchards or crabs? You don't cast net a bunch of pilchard or buy a half-dozen crab, do you?"I was stumped. He had me there. But there has to be a rule, just not sure what that would be.

An editor of a highly regarded fishing magazine once corrected my use of SHRIMP as a plural. He preferred SHRIMPS. We talked about it, and both chuckled. But in my opinion, you chum for bonefish with fresh shrimp, not SHRIMPS!

And you can cast FLIES to them, and if you land one, you caught it on FLY. On the flip side, if you caught three bonefish (NOT BONEFISHES) on jigs, you couldn't very well say you caught them them on LURE, right? Sounds stupid.

Three GROUPERS? No. Two SAILFISHES. Hardly. A limit of SEATROUTS? Really?

But, "We caught a mess of GRUNTS, CROAKERS, PUFFERS, SKATES, SARDINES, JACKS, BLUE RUNNERS or STRIPERS" rolls off the tongue without offending the ear.

Think about it, go down your mental list of gamefish, and get back to me with your opinion. Email mike@flyandlighttackleangler.com.  I promise not to laugh--though I might have a few LAUGHS in private.