FLY-FISHING. 247 



Greenbeart has lately become the favorite wood, 

 being now almost universally employed in England, 

 and offers, certainly, some desirable advantages ; but 

 I have not had sufficient experience with it to speak 

 decisively of its merits. A salmon-rod should be 

 twenty feet long ; after giving the matter due 

 deliberation, and trying to reduce every ounce of 

 weight, I have resolved that I cannot take off an 

 inch from twenty feet. To meet the objection that 

 a weak, small man must, under these circumstances, 

 either give up the fishing or the rod, I would suggest 

 that he inure himself to the labor by practising, 

 for his first few days upon the river, with a sixteen- 

 foot rod till his muscles are strengthened, and then 

 substituting one of full length and weight. 



A sixteen-foot rod may be handled beautifully, 

 will cast the fly lightly, will kill a fish delicately, but 

 it will not enable the possessor to force his line 

 against or across a gust of wind eddying down the 

 bank of the stream, nor to command all the casts 

 of a broad river with facility, neither can he strike 

 with certainty, nor kill his fish with rapidity. Sal- 

 mon rivers are usually wide, sometimes wild, broken, 

 and impassable even for that wonderful compound 

 of life and lightness, the birch canoe, and cannot be 

 reached in every part except with a long line under 

 perfect control ; frequently, the very spot where the 

 fish habit, the swirl of the current or the pitch of 

 the cascade is beyond the limits of him of the fif- 

 teen-foot rod ; and if by the utmost effort the line 

 is cast far enough, the first eddy will slack it up 



