256 
like an ordinary hard wood rod. ‘They 
are good rods, and Lord Lovat pos- 
sessed one for many years, with which 
he killed two tons of salmon. 
Although built-cane rods, like built- 
cane cricket-bat handles, are undoubt- 
edly an English invention, compara- 
tively very few were made in this 
country until American rod-makers im- 
proved them by making them hexa- 
gonal, thus keeping all the hard enamel 
on the outside of the rod, and, by using 
machinery in their manufacture, se- 
curing the necessary uniformity in size 
of the sections used in making up each 
joint—a very expensive, tedious, and 
uncertain process when done by hand. 
In Great Britian and Ireland, in our 
colonies, in India, in Canada, in fact 
all over the world where angling can be 
practiced by our countrymen, the 
built-up cane rod is used and most 
highly appreciated; and for this we 
have chiefly to thank those celebrated 
American rod-makers, Mitchell and 
Leonard. For all this, it cannot be 
said that with us the built-up cane is 
the prime favorite, as it isin America. 
The majority of our anglers still pre- 
fer, for most kinds of fishing, rods 
made of greenheart. 
Itis a somewhat curious fact that, al- 
though ‘‘spinning from the reel” is a 
very favorite method of fishing, both in 
this country and in America, the reels 
used and the methods of using them 
are quite different. By ‘‘spinning from 
the reel” is meant casting a spinning 
bait from twenty to fifty, and in some 
cases eighty, yards, by allowing the 
line to run off the reel, carried by the 
bait, which has been propelled through 
the air by a more or less vigorous 
swing of the rod. Without illustrations 
it is somewhat difficult to describe this 
very fascinating method of fishing in a 
The American Angler 
Oo 
few words. Everyone knows what a 
revolving crane for loading and unload- 
ing railway trucks, ships, etc., is like. 
Suppose the angler to be the body of 
the crane, the long arm the rod, and 
the chain and windlass the reel and 
line. The angler winds his bait up to 
within a foot or so of the point of the 
rod, just as the weight to be lifted is 
wound up near to the end of the arm of 
the crane. Now suppose the crane, in- 
stead of being turned on its axis slowly, 
is made to revolve rapidly for half a 
circle, and then suddenly stopped and 
the drag taken off the chain. The 
natural result would be that great mo- 
mentum would be given to the weight 
suspended from the chain, and when 
the arm of the crane was stopped the 
weight would fly off to a considerable 
distance, carrying the chain after it. 
This is the whole principle of ‘‘ spin- 
ning from the reel;”’ and, whether it 
is done from a light English ‘‘ Notting- 
ham” reel, or from an American 
‘¢Prankfort,’’ ‘‘ Van Hofe,” or **Im- 
brie’ metal multiplying reel, requires 
very considerable skill to accomplish 
successfully. By the way, Dr. Hen- 
shall is quite mistaken in his descrip- 
tion of what he, on p. 250 of the 1881 
edition of his ‘‘ Book of the Black 
Bass,” calls ‘‘the Nottingham style of 
fishing.’ He says that in this style, 
‘“much in vogue in England,” the 
angler coils a lot of line off the reel on 
the ground, lets twelve or fifteen feet 
of the line hang from the top of the 
rod, takes hold of the line a few feet 
from the sinker and gives it a few 
rapid whirls about his head, and then 
casts it as far as he can, the rod in the 
meantime being held firmly in the left 
hand. No wonder he adds that ‘‘to 
an expert angler such a game would 
not be worth the candle.’”’ An English 
