178 THE IDYL OF THE SPLIT-BAMBOO 



one side of the rod to the other. A further inno- 

 vation made by Mr. Wells (the law was his voca- 

 tion though angling was his loved avocation) con- 

 sisted in shaping the grasp more perfectly to the 

 grip of the hand than had been the custom; and 

 this whole device, combining the two distinctive fea- 

 tures of separability and shape, has since been known 

 to anglers as the " Wells grip." 



It is true that a rod so built is increased in weight 

 to the extent of the added pair of ferrules which are 

 necessary for the seating of the butt-joint within 

 the handgrasp perhaps three-quarters of an ounce. 

 But it is weight in a good place; furthermore, this 

 may be offset by use of the extremely light yet very 

 serviceable fly-rod reels that are available today, 

 and by dispensing with the solid reelseat of metal in 

 favor of simple reel bands, the so-called skeleton 

 reelseat. 



A metal reelseat is altogether unnecessary in the 

 rod adapted for fly- and the lighter bait-fishing, and 

 again, the inclusion of all this " tin " certainly adds 

 nothing in elegance of finish to such a dainty con- 

 trivance. When it comes to the short, bait-casting 

 rod, with the strenuous reel work that is imperative 

 in its use and the manifest advantage here of some 

 form of locking reel-band, that is an entirely differ- 

 ent story, and we welcome the metal reelseat as a 

 most appropriate feature of the rod, under these 

 conditions. 



