LINES AND REELS. 29 



be looked to in selecting silk-worm gut, are roundness, 

 evenness of substance, and above all transpai^ency ; and in 

 the case of very fine gut, to seeing that it has not been 

 scraped, or artificially fined down in any way. Gut so 

 treated is what is termed " drawn-gicty Its appearance 

 is not so glossy as the natural material, and it frays and 

 wears out almost directly when exposed to moisture and 

 friction of any sort. Exceedingly fine, round, natural 

 gut is, of course, somewhat expensive, and not always to 

 be obtained without some trouble, but it is essential in 

 many kinds of fishing, and will in the end be found 

 really much more economical than gut artificially fined. 



Staining Gut. 



Stained or clouded gut is much to be preferred to gut 

 unstained, because it is less visible in the water. Diffe- 

 rent fishermen afiect dift"erent stains, some preferring 

 what is termed the " red- water stain," others a neutral 

 or slate tint, and others a blue. The most important 

 point in the staining of gut is to remove the gloss, which 

 catches the light, and on a sunny day glitters through 

 the water in a manner that must produce no little as- 

 tonishment among the fish, and which would probably 

 equally astonish the angler himself could he obtain a 

 bird's-eye, or rather fish's-eye, view of his line. 



In this cardinal point, however, all the ordinary stains 

 used by the tackle makers signally fail ; the tints of 

 colour produced being moreover by no means the best 



