STAINING GUT. 49 



daik a stain has been given it may readily be reduced in 

 intensity by soaking the gut in clean boiling water. 



For the common ' red water stain,' an infusion of tea leaves, 

 boiled down until a teacupful of black tea in a quart of water 

 becomes a pint, gives a nice clean transparent tint. Somebody 

 once told me (or else I read somewhere) of a method of pro- 

 ducing a particularly perfect red water stain whilst at the same 

 time preserving the gut by using as the staining medium the 

 leas of port wine ; and I stained a quantity of gut in this way 

 to see if there was anything in the prescription. 



From a wine merchant a sufficient quantity two or three 

 quarts of the leas was obtained, which were then put into a 

 covered glazed iron pot and allowed to gently simmer on the 

 hob for forty-eight hours, when the gut was taken out and 

 thoroughly rinsed in tepid water. This was perhaps ten years 

 ago, and I have some of that gut by me still. It is as ' tough as 

 pin wire,' and possessed also of a curious propensity incon- 

 venient to the wet-, but interesting to the dry-fly fisher of 

 being extraordinarily flotant. 



I know of no stain, however, not more or less detrimental 

 to the gut itself, having the effect of really killing the glitter of 

 new gut the fly-fisher's bete noir. But it struck me that as the 

 gloss is soon taken off a gut cast after a few days' use, this result 

 must be due to the friction of the water against the gut as it is 

 drawn through ; and last year (1903), when at Loch Lomond, 

 I took an opportunity for trying the experiment. I ' anchored,' 

 so to say, a couple of new casting lines one stained and one 

 unstained by a stone in the middle of a smart stream, and 

 there left them. At the end of a week I found the gloss had to 

 an important extent disappeared, whilst the gut itself remained 

 quite ' unfrayed.' Possibly a longer experiment might produce 

 still better results. Perhaps this ' discovery ' if I may so call it 

 should prove of some practical interest to my brother fly-fishers. 



The length for the casting line, as proved by general 

 experience to be the most convenient, is about three yards. 

 In the case of salmon fishing with a second fly, or lake trout 



I, E 



