96 LETTERS TO YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



we say, with no great mechanical exactness, no leverage. 

 That is why I counselled you to begin practice with some 

 twelve yards or thereabouts, so that you might have the 

 advantage of this Sancho-Panza-like development of the 

 fat part of the line. The medium length is easier than 

 either extreme. 



I want you to catch a fish now with the straight- 

 forward method of casting whereof you have made your- 

 self master. There are refinements to which you may be 

 introduced later. Accomplished to the present moderate 

 degree, you may soon get a rise in yonder ripple. Look, 

 the point of the rod is snatched down ; the hook is 

 in him. Stay a moment and realise what has happened 

 by some happy accident, for such realisation may help 

 its repetition in a manner not quite so accidental. 

 By happy accident, as I say, you had the rod at just 

 about the right angle to keep the line tolerably 

 straight. Had it not been straight, had there been 

 bends and loose loops in the line, it is likely that the fish 

 would not have been hooked. In that rough water he really 

 hooked himself. He was obliged to make a snatch and 

 dash at the fly if he were to catch it at all in such a turmoil. 

 So he did really some of your proper work for you. It will 

 not be so always. If he had risen in a quieter place, where the 

 stream and the fly borne by it went leisurely, then he would 

 have taken the fly in like quiet and leisurely mode, and 

 " when he finds that it does not answer his purpose he will 

 spit it out before it has answered yours," as that witty little 

 book from which I lately quoted has it. In order to make it 

 " answer yours " you must — again to cite that chronicle of 

 pithy wisdom — " do something with your wrist it is not easy 

 to describe." So wise is the book that it refrains from all 

 attempt to describe that indescribable — which, if wise, is not 

 highly helpful. I will be less discreet, out of my desire to 

 aid you, and will again suggest that you consider the question 

 from the trout's, rather than your own, end of the business. 

 So regarding him, we find him with the fly, for a moment, 

 in his mouth ; in another moment he will have ejected it — 

 unless, before that second moment strikes you shall have 

 communicated to it a quick flick which, if the fish be not 



