ON ANGLING. 99 



III. 



STALKING THE FISH. 



WHEN we parted company, at the end of my last letter, 

 I left you in full enjoyment of what probably is the most 

 ecstatic moment that your whole life will give you. You 

 were playing your first trout. Ecstatic that moment is, but 

 it is also crammed full of most heart-searching anguish. 

 " He may get off ! " " The gut may break I" He may 

 get off, undoubtedly, through no fault at all of yours, just 

 because he was not firmly hooked in the first instance ; but 

 the gut, if sound to start with, will not, unless it gets round a 

 weed or other foreign body, break — always provided you 

 give it fair usage, bearing upon the fish by means of the 

 flexibility of the rod, but by no more than by the measure 

 of that elasticity, keeping a constant strain, but never an 

 excessive strain, on him. You must keep the strain constant, 

 for otherwise he has every chance of getting the hook, thus 

 allowed to sit loosely, from his jaw ; but you must not bear 

 too hardly, especially when he is first hooked. He is then 

 in his most vigorous freshness. Allow him to wear off some 

 of that freshness of breath and some of that energy of fin 

 by a tolerably free run, if he insists on taking it. Hold the 

 rod at something like an angle of forty-five degrees, and let 

 the line go freely off the reel. If he does not run out fiercely, 

 pull him, as firmly as you believe the gut will endure the 

 pull, down-stream, for in so doing you both fatigue him and 

 decrease the likelihood of his getting into weeds. Then, 

 when you feel him tiring, when his runs grow less vigorous, 

 reel him in, " give him the butt/' as it is called ; that is 

 to say, hold the rod up vertically from your hand, so that it 

 is the butt end that comes nearest to the fish. You now 

 have all the strain of the rod's spring upon him. He comes 



