CHAPT, iv. Spinning with a Pliable Fly Rod. 15 



water, and replacing your fly collar by your spinning brace, the 

 former being wound round your hat, or better still, thrown down 

 for your attendant to crown Ids turband with at better leisure 

 than you can possibly be expected to have while so deeply engaged. 

 These were the considerations that first led to my spinning with 

 a fly top in old experimentalizing days, when also I wanted to 

 make a fair trial which was the more killing bait, a fly or a fish. 

 1 came thereby to learn, however, that a pliable top carries with it 

 very much more important advantages. The Mahseer takes its fly 

 perhaps much as a salmon does, rising at it and descending quiet!} 

 to its old place at the bottom till it feels the hook, but even then 

 its first rush alter feeling the hook is very much more violent than 

 a salmon's. It is this grand first rush that is the glory of Mahseer 

 fishing. But in spinning there is added to it yet another danger, the 

 Mahseer does not ordinarily take its fish quietly as if it knew it w< mid 

 be unresisting like a puny fly, but it seizes it, not always, certainly, 

 but not uncommonly, with an angry blow that gives a sudden jerk 

 to the line; it comes at the fish bait with a swoop like a hawk, and 

 seizing it passes swirling by at speed. To this angry jerk is very 

 quickly added the grand rush that follows on feeling the restraint 

 of the hook and line. Then it is that you find out, as mentioned in 

 Chapter II, that no hand is light enough. The Mahseer is too 

 quick for you. Before you can drop the top the mischief is done. 

 There has been a sudden smash, and your friend has gone. You 

 think, dear me, that was a splendid fish, my tackle was not strong 

 enough. I venture to say that the probabilities are that the fish 

 that broke you was not a bit heavier than the last you killed on 

 that same line, and that if you had only got on terms with him at 

 starting, by means of a pliable rod, you might equally have killed 

 him also. I do not deny, be it remembered, that the Mahseer do 

 grow very large, and do want very strong and fresh tackle, but I 

 maintain also that much of their violence may he neutralised, and 

 the necessity for very coarse tackle obviated, by the use of a pliable 

 fly rod in preference to a stiff trolling rod. I say not only fly rod, 

 but pliable fly rod, foi fly rods for salmon are made both stiff and 

 pliable, and 1 prefer the latter. The rod is in effect only the hand 

 end of the line, it is the last connecting link between the fish and 



the hand. I d t understand the term Mahseer rod as if it were 



necessary to have something mi generis. An ordinary pliable 



