106 LETTERS TO YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



on it. For casting to a fish rising under tree boughs it is 

 the only possible way. 



I have already given you some useful hints about borrow- 

 ing from a friend such angling apparatus as are at all likely 

 to suffer injury by your unskilled efforts. I would urge the 

 wise precaution most particularly in respect of your practice 

 of a very useful form of cast which I will now attempt to 

 describe to you : that is the cast for sending out the line in 

 the face of an opposing breeze. Of course, if the breeze is a 

 gale no skill or effort will send out the line ; but in the teeth 

 of any wind in moderation it is wonderful what your rod, 

 rightly used, will do for you in this way. I say the rod will 

 do, for always you should bear in mind that the spring of 

 the rod is the immediate cause of the outgoing of the line. 

 Your part is merely to set this spring working. Now, if, 

 in face of the wind, you execute the vertical cast as I have 

 described, and finish the flick with your forearm well above 

 the horizontal, you will find that you leave the line much at 

 the mercy of the breeze to blow back to you. To cast into 

 the wind's face you must carry the flicking action further 

 and lower. Your hand and forearm must come down right 

 to the horizontal, or below it. Imagine yourself to be trying 

 to flick the imaginary pellet of moist clay on to the water 

 very little in advance of the rod's tip : it is wonderful how 

 kindly the line will then cut into the wind if you time this 

 flick rightly. Again, the timing is everything. Avoid using 

 extra force. Grip the rod firmly, in this as in all modes of 

 the cast, but do not use too much muscle. Remember, it 

 is the springy rod top, not your biceps, that is sending the 

 line out. And this movement will bring the top of the rod 

 itself almost down upon the water. In one or other of your 

 novitiate efforts it is nearly sure that you will bang the 

 water with the rod top itself. I have never seen a rod top 

 broken in the practice of this cast, but I have seen such 

 aquatic hangings that I can only wonder I have not. That 

 is why I suggest that, for your first practice in this throw, 

 more even than in another, it is the part of a wise youth to 

 borrow of a friend perhaps, still better, of an enemy ! 



