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Whiting
Appears in
By Kevin Mitchell and David S. Shields
Published 2021
Wildlife officials now call it the Southern Kingfish (Menticirrhus americanus), but to fishermen and gastronomes in South Carolina it had another name, a name so savory when pronounced it made a fish lover’s gastric juices percolate: Whiting. And the deep water, fully adult version, the most cherished of coastal-caught fishes, is the bullhead whiting. You know it by the one short stubby barbel dangling beneath its chin.
In 1886, a commentator on Charleston’s fish market observed, “The whiting is an aristocratic kind of fish with fastidious tastes, and the bull-head variety is the crème de la crème of the whiting family, piscatorial Poo-Bahs, in fact, which are born sneering, and despise such common bait as clams or difflers. ‘No swimp, no whitin’ is an old proverb in fishing circles.” Until the shrimp began to run in coastal waters—in May—there was no securing whiting in the market.