34 FLY FISHING. 



Fly Fishing. 



Angling for trout may be classed under the three following heads : 

 1. Fly fishing, including both the natural and artificial fly. 2. 

 Minnow trolling. And 3. Bait angling : all of which I purpose 

 treating of in the order in which I have here laid them down ; com- 

 mencing with fly fishing, that most elegant and interesting branch 

 of the art of angling, in whose service so many devoted competi- 

 tors are engaged ; one, indeed, in which both science and skill 

 have so wide a field for display ; and where young gentlemen, 

 ambitious of the graceful, may congratulate themselves, even in the 

 absence of success, with the consolatary idea that though the fish 

 have this time escaped them, they have at any rate exhibited such 

 attitudes and postures as even the most accomplished dancing 

 master might strive in vain to imitate. There are some, however, 

 who style themselves fly fishers, who yet, as Colonel Hawker re- 

 marks, have about as much idea of throwing a hatchet as a fly, 

 and seem to stand about the same chance of catching fish with the 

 one, as cutting off their heads, or beating out their brains (the 

 fishes,' not the fishers') with the other. Still some very un- 

 ungraceful fishers contrive somehow or other to pull the fish out, 

 whilst those who handle their rods more elegantly return home 

 empty : for a fly fisher has much more to acquire than mere skill 

 in casting out his line, which will avail him little, unless he 

 knows to what spot to direct his flies, as also the proper flies 

 for his purpose. 



In order to throw a fly skilfully a good rod is almost indispen- 

 sable, and which, as Mr. Ronalds remarks in his talented little 

 work on Fly Fishing, should, " like the bow of the archer, be duly 

 proportioned to the weight and dimensions of him who wields it;" 

 but he seems rather to overrate the ordinary strength of mankind, 

 when he proceeds to add, that the strong or tall man may venture 

 upon a rod fourteen or fifteen feet long ; but at the same time he 

 recommends to persons less robust, a rod of twelve feet or twelve 

 feet and a half, and light in proportion. From my own experience, 

 though by no means weak in my limbs, I have found a rod of the 

 latter size quite as much as I could comfortably manage throughout 

 an entire day's fly fishing, though my rod for minnow trolling has 

 been usually from fifteen to sixteen, and sometimes eighteen feet 



