THE ROACH. 47 



you may know that you are not deep enough ; and so the 

 float can be altered a few times either wsij until you get the 

 right depth, which can easily be come at. Suppose the first 

 time you swim the float down the stream you find you are 

 not deep enough, alter it a little higher up the line ; after 

 a few trials you find, by the float catching and bobbing 

 under, that you have found the bottom. Now be careful, 

 and alter the float a couple of inches at a time only, and 

 as soon as ever it swims comfortably down you have got 

 the exact depth. The tackle for stream fishing should 

 be shotted so that three-quarters of an inch of the float 

 stands above the surface of the water. Say the angler 

 wishes his baited hook to travel down the swim some few 

 yards further out than he can reach with his rod point. To 

 accomplish this, in either trying the depth or in actual fish- 

 ing, he takes the rod in his right hand close against the 

 top of the reel with one finger reaching down to the edge 

 of the revolving barrel, on purpose to stop its revolutions, 

 if necessary (this finger, I may say, is the bottom edge of 

 the last or little one) ; and with his left hand he takes hold 

 of the line between the two first rings on his rod, and draws 

 down and off the reel, as it were, a double length of line. 

 He has now some two or three j-ards of line in his left hand, 

 and three or four more hang from the point of the rod. 

 To make the cast, he brings the rod point away from, the 

 river and partly behind him, and it does not matter in which 

 direction it is done; the rod can either be swung to the 

 right hand or to the left, whichever way suits the locality 

 of the swim best. For instance, there may be a hedge 

 or a bush immediately to the right or to the left of the 

 angler, and the rod must of necessity be put in the opposite 

 direction. Now swing it sharply forward over towards the 

 river again, at the same time easing the pressure of the little 

 finger on the edge of the reel, and also leaving go of the 

 loop of line in his left hand ; these two operations should 

 be done nearly together, the loop of line being, released as 

 soon as the float and tackle swings forward in front of the 

 rod point, and the pressure on the reel taken off immedi- 

 ately afterwards. After a little practice the baited tackle 

 will go fair and square to its destination. After this cast 



