THE REEL. — PLY-HOOKS. 317 



The great beauty of gut is to be correctly round and perfectly 

 equal in thickness, which enables it to stand a strain which if it 

 were unequal would cause it to give way. 



The reel should be of brass, which I prefer to German silver, 

 bushed and rivetted with steel. It should have a balance 

 handle, and a click, which is of great use, as preventing more 

 of the line than is required from running off it while in the act of 

 casting, before a fish is struck ; but a catch or stop must on no 

 account be used, as it will frequently stop the line at the very 

 moment when it should run the fastest. I had almost forgotten 

 to add, that the simple reel is vastly preferred by all truly 

 scientific anglers to the multiplier, which in fact is now almost 

 exploded. 



The fly-hooks should unquestionably be of the Limerick bend, 

 and even for spinning with the parr, or fishing -with, the worm 

 or the deadly roe-bait, all of which are very killing to the 

 Salmon, the same form is the preferable. 



The great size and weight of the Salmon renders the use of 

 the landing-net impossible, and it is, moreover, at the best, a 

 clumsy and unportable machine. For it, therefore, the angler 

 substitutes the gaff — a sharp, unbarbed hook, of convenient 

 size, which screws securely into the head of a stout ashen-shaft, 

 the butt of which may conveniently be hollowed so as to contain 

 spare fly-tops, as it is inadmissible to subtract from the weight 

 of the rod-butt by hollowing it. 



With this hook, so soon as the fish is sufficiently exhausted 

 to be drawn within striking, held in the right hand while the 

 rod is transferred to the left, he gaffs the fish steadily and 

 sharply in the solid portion of the tail below the abdominal 



