Experiments are described in which the dorsal‐aspect target strengths of a number of individual teleostean fishes of eight species were measured at various frequencies. The results of these experiments indicate that the variations of target strength with frequency are different for fishes in two major teleostean groups, the malacopterygians and the acanthopterygians. These results are combined with results from eight other sources and an empirical equation approximating the dorsal‐aspect target strength of an individual fish determined for 0.7⩽L/λ⩽90, whereLis the fish length and λ is the incident acoustic wavelength. The combined results are compared to similar results for the maximum side‐aspect target strength of an individual fish, and curves showing the trend of dorsal‐aspect and maximum side‐aspect acoustic cross sections of an individual swimbladder‐bearing fish are presented for allL/λ⩽90.