FLY-FISHING CASUALTIES. 11 



have been used to produce a more perfect reel ; and there 

 are now to be obtained stop-reels, multiplying-reels, and 

 reels with as many internal cog and other wheels as would 

 start a clockmaker. Of these complicated apparatuses 

 beware, for they are fraught with disappointment and 

 vexation of spirit ; the old simple click reel is the only 

 one that deserves the honour of being attached to a fly-rod. 

 Still, too much care and attention cannot be devoted to 

 their construction. Every screw and joint should be as 

 perfectly finished as those of a gun from a first-class 

 manufacturer. The barrel of the reel should be wide in 

 proportion to its length, for you thus gain power or give 

 line with greater freedom ; nothing is more unsightly or 

 more awkward than a long narrow-barrelled reel. Brass 

 is the metal usually employed for their construction, but 

 the newly-invented aluminium bronze is infinitely to be 

 preferred, for it does not corrode or discolour with tha 

 action of the atmosphere, and it is less liable to suffer from 

 a blow or fall ; mischances that the fly-fisher's parapher- 

 nalia, more particularly in a rocky mountainous country, 

 are especially liable to, when following the course of a 

 trout brook, for stones will be slippery and fishermen have 

 been known to take too much grog. Who among our 

 expert salmon-trout fishermen cannot remember having 

 obtained a frightful cropper when precipitously following 

 up or down stream a heavy fish he was fast to ? I do not 

 require to tax my memory greatly to recal half-a-dozen 

 such casualties. There are various methods of attaching 

 the reel to the rod. Of none do I approve so highly as that 

 by \vhich the reel is held fast in a shallow indentation by a 



