Tautog. Blackfish. And when they are tiny they are green, brown and not near black as they match the sea lettuce and growth on the inshore rocks when they grow up. The area in between Atlantic Highlands(marina) south to Highlands is a great spot to find the tiny guys that use the area with tiny cunner. Lots of big rocks with growth on them that hold food. I helped set up a behavior study where tiny blackfish would compete for hiding spots in a habitat(shells) to avoid a predator. Well -the tiny ones would shove another fish out of the habitat and survive.
What I usually forget when I'm tog fishing-which isn't a daily event-is that big tog will grab their food and bash it against the bottom to break it up. That's what has happened when I swing and miss.
http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/publications/tm/tm118/
an except taken from the above link...
FEEDING BEHAVIOR
Tautog feed throughout the daytime. Beginning soon after sunrise, tautog were reported to leave their shelters to forage for food, which involved scan-and-pick feeding (Briggs 1969b; Olla et al. 1975). This activity sometimes took the adults up to 500 m from their homesites (Wicklund 1966; Olla et al.1974). Bigelow and Schroeder (1953) observed that tautog followed the flood tide up above low water levels, around ledges, to prey on mussels in the intertidal zone, and returned to deeper water during the ebb tide. Feeding continued to evening twilight (Olla et al. 1974). Olla et al. (1974) reported that tautog required about 8 hr to process and evacuate food.
In laboratory studies, Olla et al. (1974) observed that tautog grasped mussels with their anterior teeth and tore them from their attached substrate with a lateral shaking of the head. Small prey were swallowed whole (Bigelow and Schroeder 1953), while larger, hard-shelled ones were crushed by pharyngeal teeth before swallowing (Bigelow and Schroeder 1953; Olla et al. 1974). The anterior teeth were not involved in the crushing process (Olla et al. 1974, Liem and Sanderson 1986). It was observed that the tautog's mouth can accommodate larger clumps of mussels than the pharyngeal teeth can process efficiently. In this case, the fish ingests and egests the clump from its mouth, separating it in the process into smaller, crushable sizes. The feeding and mastication methods of this species are specialized and typical of labrids and cichlids only (Liem and Sanderson 1986).
In the southern part of its range (i.e., below New Jersey), the blue mussel, a dominant prey in colder waters, is at its warm-temperature limits and has wide variability in recruitment and abundance (Foster et al. 1994). Without strong periodic recruitment, mussel populations in these areas can be preyed upon by tautog to near extirpation, as reported for Virginia (Chee 1977; Chesapeake Executive Council 1994). This near extirpation creates a change in the prey field available to tautog in this habitat, and can cause at least some of the tautog population to seek alternate or better foraging areas. This change in prey field can be a factor in the local distribution of the population. (See the "Adults" subsection, "Differential Distribution" section of the "Distribution and Habitat" chapter.)
FACTORS AFFECTING FEEDING
Tautog find prey visually and were reported not to feed at night (Olla et al. 1974; Deacutis 1982). Neither do they actively feed in northern waters during the coldest part of the year (Cooper 1966; Curran 1992). In Narragansett Bay, Cooper (1966) observed that of 15 tautog, 13 had shrunken and emptied digestive tracts in winter. The other two fish had remains of Atlantic rock crabs in their stomachs. Curran (1992) found all feeding stopped in the closely related cunner (and probably tautog) when water temperatures reached the low levels that induce torpor and hibernation. Cunner, at least, survived up to 6 mo without food, using glycogen, lipids, and proteins stored in their livers (Curran 1992); tautog may do likewise.
In laboratory experiments, a decrease in feeding was observed with an increase in water temperature above certain levels. Tautog which had been acclimated to temperatures of 19°C and 21°C, respectively, decreased their ingestion of food, when water temperatures were increased to 28.7-33.0°C over a certain amount of days (Olla and Studholme 1975; McCormack 1976; Olla et al. 1978). McCormack (1976) also reported that it required up to 7 days for field-collected fish to begin feeding in laboratory aquaria. (For other environmental effects on feeding, see the "Habitat Modification and Loss" section of the "Natural and Human-Induced Environmental Factors" chapter.)
Tautog were observed to vary, to some extent, their feeding in association with their place in a group dominance hierarchy. In one laboratory study with three fish, the dominant fish of the moment ate the greatest amount of food, followed by the subordinate fish, in some order of rank (Olla et al. 1978). In a related tank study, McCormack (1976), however, found no difference in consumption of Atlantic surfclam (Spisula solidissima) meats between the dominant and subordinate individuals of paired 160-280 mm tautog.
Food intake in tautog may decrease during spawning. Bridges and Fahay (1968) reported possible courtship behavior of tautog in a laboratory study during which no spawning occurred. In this study, 1 day prior to courtship behavior, the male and female daily food (undefined) intake decreased from 40 to 1g. During courtship behavior, which lasted 2 wk, the 300-mm female ceased eating, but the 270-mm male increased food intake to 10 g/day. After courtship behavior ceased, the female resumed eating, but less than 10 g/day. The time period that this reduced level of feeding persisted, or if it changed, was not reported. It is possible that some of this behavior was an artifact of the fish's confinement in aquaria, as it has not been documented in the wild.
Deacutis (1982) found tautog did not have an acute sense of smell for detecting prey, compared to red hake (Urophycis chuss), and were hesitant to explore open bottom to find food they could not see.
http://www.asmfc.org/species/tautog
I can't find any good photo's of blackfish in my collection...
