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It is true that until the angler who has used his coarse 

 tackle gets accustomed to the more delicate, till the fly- 

 fisherman for instance, overcomes the habit of " striking 

 with all his might," advised by one famous writer, he 

 will meet with a "smash up" now and then, and lose some 

 fish. It is also true that in fishing lor striped bass in the 

 surf with a single gut, a blue fish will frequently cut the 

 line and carry oft bait and hook. But these are matters 

 which can'be cured by practice or borne with equanimity, 

 and do not compare with the sense of degradation that 

 one feels when a brother of the angle catches all the fish 

 and carries off all the honors. 



If we find that we are taking nothing, while our neigh- 

 bor is doing well and having fine sport, we should, in- 

 stead of denouncing the fates, attribute the disparity in 

 nine cases out of ten to his finer tackle, unless we can see 

 that he is a better fisherman than ourselves. We should 

 try to find out at once in what our inferiority lies and 

 remedy it without delay. So accustomed are people to 

 common and rude implements, that they will at first think 

 it impossible to have better. The tautog fisherman as a 

 case in point, has always used a stick, a string and a hook, 

 or what is even inferior, a hand line, and to tell him that 

 he would do better with a short leader of silk-worm gut, 

 would make him stare and laugh, yet the change would 

 often, especially in still, clear water double his catch. 



The rule should be an invariable one, that for fish 

 under ten pounds, a leader of gut not heavier than that 

 known as salmon gut should be used. This will bear a 

 direct strain of six pounds, and should enable a skillful 

 angler to kill a salmon that would weigh fifty, if not a hun- 

 dred. An ordinary flax line will part at about a strain of 

 twenty-five pounds, and a three-ply twisted gut leader 

 will support about eighteen pounds. A fish in the water 



