loo LETTERS TO YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



within reach of the landing-net. You have caught your first 

 trout ! 



Of course, it is not always thus. But it costs no more 

 to paint the picture in bright colours, and my idea was to 

 describe to you how the thing should be done in order to 

 achieve the end that you desire. There are about a hundred 

 ways in which the thing should not be done, and which will 

 defeat the achievement. You will learn all those for yourself 

 quite soon enough by help of that best of teachers — painful 

 experience. It would take a book to describe them all, 

 and it would be a black book when it was done. So we will 

 leave, for the moment, these many occasions for failure, 

 and I will ask you to take a cast back with me to my last 

 letter and consider what I there said about a certain part 

 (the heavier part, which is the nearest to the rod's point) 

 of the reel line of a past-master of the art of fly-casting going 

 into the water with a very apparent splash. Try to visualise 

 that, for it may then serve as an object lesson to you. Realise 

 that this heavy portion of the line goes down into the water 

 and, of its own movement and weight, is the immediate instru- 

 ment of carrying out, away beyond itself, the lighter line and 

 the gut. Try to induce your own line to perform the same 

 delightful antic. It is a movement of beautiful grace in 

 its straightening curves when rightly executed, and its 

 achievement is almost as pleasurable as the very catching 

 of a fish. You may take it as an earnest, too, of your ability 

 to catch many a fish when you find yourself executing it 

 tolerably. You have a very great deal more to learn yet, 

 but you have acquired the essential secret : your hand 

 has learnt to move the rod in such mode as to impart the 

 right movement to the line : you have acquired appreciation 

 of the right "timing" : your sense of touch and of feel has 

 been educated to respond to the hint given by the weight 

 of the line up in the air. 



This is the great essential. All the rest that I shall have 

 to tell you — and I might go on telling from early morn until 

 the cows come home, and stiJI there would be a thousand and 

 one things left to say — all the rest is, as it were, a mass 

 of details, mere variations on the one theme. Thus far I 

 have been supposing you casting with your right hand and 



