FLY-FISHItfG. 253 



better than with one of slower materials. It is 

 quick, reliable, vigorous, and light, the slighest 

 motion gives the tip the requisite spring, and it 

 answers every effort of the hand instantly. It kills 

 a fish powerfully and rapidly, and exposure to wet 

 neither deadens nor weakens it. The ordinary hick- 

 ory and ash-joint are much stronger, but are logy 

 in their action and far heavier; joints of red cedar 

 or malacca are light, beautiful, and expensive, but 

 are almost unattainable, and are, occasionally at least, 

 deficient in power ; and whalebone, for any part of 

 the rod, is dull, heavy, inappropriate, and when 

 water-soaked, utterly worthless. For these reasons 

 and many others these are enough, however a 

 rod of split bamboo worked round, is the best. 



Many persons give the preference to a limber rod, 

 one that bends in the middle, and they can, after 

 infinite practice, cast well with it; in pleasant 

 weather they can throw a light line, but when the 

 storm lowers and the w^ind blows, or the current 

 rages, or the cast is very long, or the bushes over- 

 hang, then good-bye to the gentleman with that 

 most wretched of implements, a weak-backed lim- 

 ber rod. Give me no such inefficient deception to 

 break my wrist, my heart, and my patience ; as w r ell 

 tell me that whalebone has the vigor of a steel 

 spring. 



The joints of a rod are united in various ways ; 

 with the salmon-rod it is almost essential, and with 

 all rods desirable, to use splices, but the custom is to 

 indulge the laziness of ferrules. American ferrules 



