ON ANGLING. 113 



angler does not worry through any such brain-fagging 

 business as these curvilinear estimates would suggest. 

 Experience and practice have taught him to realise, without 

 taking thought, how much allowance to make for the slack 

 waves which he will make in his line and to throw with a 

 length, nicely adjusted, in accordance therewith. And 

 experience and practice are the only mentors which can lead 

 a man to this realisation. But all this time you are panting, 

 I know, to be asking me for another reason — the reason why 

 it is desirable to throw a wavy rather than a straight line. 

 I will tell you. You see a fish rising at an angle of forty-five 

 degrees, we will say, above you and rather towards the other 

 bank of the river. Now, suppose you throw a dead straight 

 line, pitching a fly two or three feet above him — what happens ? 

 What happens is this : that the moment the dead straight 

 line alights on the water the force of the current begins to 

 pull it down ; and before your fly, though so accurately pitched, 

 has floated down the two or three feet to the fish the 

 influence of the current-borne reel-line has dragged it in 

 towards you. 



The effect of that is, for one thing, that it does not go 

 over the fish at all ; perhaps it goes as much as a foot this 

 side of him. But there is also another, and a very much 

 worse, effect. It is very fortunate if it has gone so much this 

 side of him that he has not seen it. What is far more likely 

 is that he has seen it ; and with fatal result. Once more I 

 will ask you to put yourself in his place and to look out at his 

 world with his eyes. It is a world much made up of things 

 floating over him at just such pace as the current goes. But 

 what is this portent that all on a sudden has been presented 

 to his astonished gaze ! This thing, this fly of yours, has gone 

 not with the current, nor at the current's pace, but faster, 

 and across it, and, most terrifying of all, has left what 

 we call a wake, a cleft in the water, behind it. None 

 of the ordinary flotsam does this ; so that you, seeing 

 with the trout's eyes, behold an unfamiliar and, therefore, 

 a fearful sight ; you flee away in alarm, or, at best, sink 

 lower in the water and lie there in suspicious, sullen, sceptical 

 mood. This phenomenon, which I have thus endeavoured to 

 describe, is that " drag " to which you will have heard so 



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