86 FLY FISHING FOR TROUT. 



strong man can use a twelve foot rod for dry 

 fly fishing, though he changed his views in later 

 years. I started by using a twelve foot split 

 cane on the Test, Itchen and Kennet, and I do 

 not think I broke of tener than I do now with a 

 nine or ten footer. During the eighteenth 

 century, after the reel, twelve to fourteen feet 

 was not uncommon. The jointed rod is first 

 mentioned by Lawson in 1620, but was not much 

 used till the eighteenth century. Lawson's 

 rod, and the eighteenth century rod, was 

 spliced. He says : 'I use a rod of two parts to 

 joyne in the middle when I come to the river, 

 with two pins, and a little hempe waxed, thus 

 the pins joyne it, the hempe fastens it firmly. 5 

 As late as Stewart's time many people, himself 

 included, preferred spliced rods to ferruled. 

 Indeed, spliced rods survived much later, and 

 have by no means disappeared to-day. They 

 disappeared in proportion as the workmanship 

 of the ferrule improved. In the older rods it 

 had many weaknesses : the joint either worked 

 loose or jammed : the rod was amazingly apt to 

 break either in the socket, or just below the 

 joints, disasters impossible to repair : and the 

 heavy metal work then necessary hindered the 

 play. Modern rod-making, to which intense 

 technical skill has been applied, gradually 

 remedied all these defects; but it was not till 

 the eighties that the balance swung definitely 

 over to the ferrule. Wells' American Salmon 

 Fisherman in 1886 and Halford's Dry-Fly 



