interposition of a bank or bush, you may almost be sure to raise, and take him too, if it be presently done; the fish will otherwise peradventure be removed to some other place, if it be in the still deeps, where he is always in motion, and roving up and down to look for prey; though in a stream, you may always almost, especially if there be a good stone near, find him in the same place. Your line ought in this case to be three good hairs next the hook, both by reason you are in this kind of angling to expect the biggest fish, and also that wanting length to give him line after he is struck, you must be forced to tug for it; to which I will also add, that not an inch of your line being to be suffered to touch the water in dibbing, it may be allowed to be the stronger. I should now give you a description of those flies, their shape and color, and then give you an account of their breeding, and withal show you how to keep and use them; but shall defer them to their proper place and season.

VIAT. In earnest, Sir, you discourse very rationally of this affair; and I am glad to find myself mistaken in you; for in plain truth I did not expect so much from you.

PISC. Nay, Sir, I can tell you a great deal more than this, and will conceal nothing from you. But I must now come to the second way of angling at the top, which is with an artificial fly, which also I will show you how to make before I have done; but first shall acquaint you, that with this you are to angle with a line longer by a yard and a half, or sometimes two yards, than your rod; and with both this and the other, in a still day in the streams, in a breeze that curls the water in the still deeps, where (excepting in May and June, that the best trouts will lie in shallow streams to watch for prey, and even then too) you are like to hit the best fish.

For the length of your rod,* you are always to be governed by the breadth of the river you shall choose to angle at; and for a trout river, one of five or six yards long is commonly enough; and longer, though never so neatly and artifically made, it ought not to be, if you intend to fish at ease; and if otherwise, where lies the sport?

Of these, the best that ever I saw are made in Yorkshire, which are all of one piece; that is to say, of several, six, eight, ten, or twelve pieces, so neatly pieced, and tied together with fine thread below and silk above, as to make it taper like a switch, and to ply with a true bent to your hand; and these too are light, being made of fir-wood, for two or three lengths nearest to the hand, and of other wood nearer to the top, that a man might very easily manage the longest of them that ever I saw, with one hand; and these, when you have given over angling for a season, being taken to pieces, and laid up in some dry place, may afterwards be set together again in their former postures, and will be as straight, sound, and good as the first hour they were made; and being laid in oil and color, according to your master Walton's direction, will last many years.t

The length of your line, to a man that knows how to handle his rod, and to cast it, is no manner of encumbrance, excepting in woody places, and in landing of a fish, which every one that can afford to angle for pleasure has somebody to do for him; and the length of line is a mighty

*For some remarks on the construction of rods, see part i., pp. 116-17. Many good rods have been ruined by not being properly cared for during the winter; and a room heated by stove or furnace, so common in this country, is a very bad place to lay them up in; heat being more hurtful even than damp, warping the wood and starting the ferules.-Am. Ed.

advantage to the fishing at distance; and to fish fine, and far off, is the first and principal rule for trout-angling.

Your line in this case should never be less, nor ever exceed, two hairs next to the hook; for one,-though some, I know, will pretend to more art than their fellows,—is indeed too few, the least accident, with the finest hand, being sufficient to break it but he that cannot kill a trout of twenty inches long with two, in a river clear of wood and weeds, as this and some others of ours are, deserves not the name of an angler.

Now to have your whole line as it ought to be, two of the first lengths, nearest the hook, should be of two hairs a-piece; the next three lengths above them of three, the next three above them of four, and so of five, and six, and seven, to the very top: by which means your rod and tackle will in a manner be taper from your very hand to your hook; your line will fall much better and straighter, and cast your fly to any certain place, to which the hand and eye shall direct it, with less weight and violence, that would otherwise circle the water, and fright away the fish.

In casting your line,* do it always before you, and so that

*The management of the rod in casting the line, cannot be taught by book, though every writer on angling has attempted it, Theophilus South, who illustrates his rules by diagrams, perhaps more successfully than any other; but even his directions are scarcely comprehensible except by the practised angler. The better plan is to confess your ignorance to some expert friend, and ask him to teach you at the stream side. The thing to be aimed at is, a proper propulsion of your line by the spring of your rod, so that only the flies will fall lightly on the water where you wish to have them. To do this, begin with a short line and a single, rather heavy, fly. Manage the rod by grasping it firmly a little above the reel, and giving it motion not by exerting the whole arm, but the hand and wrist only. For the first cast, hold the fly between the finger and thumb of your left hand; turn the point of your rod to the right, and then, as you let loose the fly, by the spring of the rod lct the line be thrown out to its full length behind you (if you do not, your fly will be snapped off like the crack of a whip); by a like

your fly may first fall upon the water, and as little of your line with it as possible; though if the wind be stiff, you will then of necessity be compelled to drown a good part of your line to keep your fly in the water: and in casting your fly, you must aim at the further or nearer bank as the wind serves your turn; which also will be with and against you on the same side, several times in an hour, as the river winds in its course, and you will be forced to angle up and down by turns accordingly; but are to endeavor, as much as you can, to have the wind evermore on your back: and always be sure to stand as far off the bank as your length will give you leave, when you throw to the contrary side; though when the wind will not permit you so to do, and that you are constrained to angle on the same side whereon you stand, you must then stand on the very brink of the river,

motion forward, spring the line in the direction you wish the fly to fall, checking its descent in time to prevent any of the line striking the water with the fly. Then play the fly with a gentle tremulous motion of the hand across the current, if the water be swift, or in such directions as circumstances may determine, if it be still. When another cast is to be made (and fly-fishing requires industry), draw the line a little towards you so as to bend your tip, then spring it backward from such resistance, and repeat the operation as before. Remember that casting the fly, is not whipping it, though that term is sometimes inappropriately used; and that the more of your arm you use, the more clumsy you will be. It is of course easier to make a cast with the wind at your back; but as that cannot always be, practice must teach you how to manoeuvre to overcome its resistance; the main thing to be learned is so to spring your rod by the wrist only, as to give it the due movement at the tip.

When two flies are used, the lower (or tail, or end, or stretcher) fly should be the heaviest and winged (though a large hackle may be used); the dropper should be looped on the bottom line at about three feet or so from the stretcher, or a gut of such length as that it will play on the water. The upper fly is to be watched, leaving the tail fly to follow. If another fly be added, its gut, should of course, be proportionately longer; but two flies are generally quite enough, if well managed. Palmers are used mostly as drop flies; and the droppers should be light. Care should be taken to have the bottom-line of due proportions. (See note to p. 263.)-Am. Ed.

and cast your fly at the utmost length of your rod and line, up or down the river, as the gale serves.

*

It only remains, touching your line, to inquire whether your two hairs, next to the hook, are better twisted or open; and for that, I should declare that I think the open way the better, because it makes less show in the water, but that I have found an inconvenience, or two, or three, that have made me almost weary of that way; of which one is, that without dispute they are not so strong open as twisted; another, that they are not easily to be fastened of so exact an equal length in the arming, that the one will not cause the other to bag, by which means a man has but one hair upon the matter to trust to; and the last is, that these loose flying hairs are not only more apt to catch upon every twig

* This is clearly a slip of the pen; he means "better twisted than open." The inconveniences here spoken of as attending the use of hair-snoods (or snells, as the American angler calls the short line on which the hook is bent), are now generally avoided by the substitution of silk-worm gut. Saunders, in his Complete Fisherman, 1724, is the first to make mention of this material, now so essential to the angler's outfit. The passage, which occurs p. 91-2, is so interesting that I transcribe it: "The Swiss and the Milanese, and the inhabitants of the more mountainous parts of Italy, are esteemed the greatest artists at trout fishing, perhaps in the world; and it is not unlikely it may be occasioned by the many fine trout rivers which they have among the Alps, and falling from these mountains either into the Po on the south, the Rhine on the north, or the Rhone on the west sides of that country. These, they tell us, make a fine and exceeding strong hair or line, resembling a single hair, which is drawn from the bowels of the silk-worms, the glutinous substance of which is such, that like the cat's gut which makes strings for the viol and violin, of an unaccountable strength, so this will be so strong, as nothing of so small a size can equal it in nature; for it is rather smaller than the single hair ordinarily used in fishing, and strong as the catgut itself; so that with these lines, they secure the strongest fish in those rivers where they have some trouts very large, as well as other fish. I have seen an imitation of these worm-gut lines in England, and indifferent strong too, but not like those I have mentioned, in Italy; yet these will hold a fish of a good size too, if she be not too violent, and does not nimbly harness herself among weeds and roots of trees, where she cannot be pulled out."