IN THE BEGINNING 9 



ship whose articles most of us feel we have not 

 yet served. I do not of course underrate the 

 importance of other necessary details, but I think 

 that the most essential matter for the beginner 

 with the fly-rod, ambitious to take trout, is to 

 learn the rules of casting and follow them. Let 

 me expand the instruction a little. 



(1) Pause between the casts, without letting 

 the line touch the ground ; or, if "a pause 

 between the casts " conveys the sense of some- 

 thing awkward, put it to yourself in another way : 

 make up your mind to re-start the forward cast 

 precisely when you realize that you have got the 

 line and gut out well behind you. Moreover, 

 just as a cricket bat which is made by the batsman 

 to drive a ball has therefore to do its duty as 

 part of the combination, so must your fly-rod be 

 allowed to do its share of the work. A well-built 

 rod will respond to all reasonable demands, and 

 it pays to have a good one. With a rod of cheap 

 material and inferior workmanship, the top piece 

 is very liable to come to grief if and when the 

 inexperienced hand strikes too hard at a rising 

 trout or catches up in herbage, etc., behind. 



(2) Keep the body still. The youthful 

 beginner is apt at first to flick his flies off. The 

 error is corrected by experience, in which the fact 

 that flies nowadays cost about threepence each 

 plays its part. When first starting to practise 

 throwing the fly, the beginner can wisely use fly- 

 rod and line only, that is, without any gut. The 

 addition of a cast, and later on, of a fly, and then 



