INTRODUCTORY. 373 



ability to "snatch a grace beyond the rules of art" is not given to 

 everyone, and the seemingly simple operations of tackle making are 

 often ill-performed, to the disgust of the beginner, because of a lack of 

 dexterity on his part. In the directions I shall give, therefore, clearness 

 and perspicacity will be aimed at rather than rhetorical finish, so that 

 the patient amateur angler may not only pursue the " gentle craft " with 

 success, but construct his own apparatus for the purpose, and thus be in 

 a position of independence of all but the manufacturer of the raw 

 material, and the makers of such apparatus (par example, rods), as 

 demand and competition place before him at a cheaper price than he 

 himself could in any case hope to rival. 



Tackle making certainly is tiresome, and, like every mechanical art, 

 it is to an extent disappointing until the learner has mastered the 

 rudiments of the business. It then grows interesting, and not only 

 so, but positively a source of pleasure, and a means of saving many 

 a shilling, which is an object with the persistent fisherman, especially, 

 as is chiefly the case, when he is of that important portion of the 

 population known as the " middle class." From this middle class, be 

 it said, the majority of anglers are drawn. The luxuries vended by the 

 high class tackle makers are beyond his means, for he cannot afford 

 to contribute towards the expenses of handsome shops in crowded 

 thoroughfares and country houses by paying fifty, and often eighty, 

 per cent, more than the amount it would cost him to make the article 

 himself if he knew how. Such costly refinements as those referred to, 

 however reliable in point of workmanship and strength they may be, 

 are suitable only to the aristocratic angler, for whom everything must 

 be of the costliest. Albeit such splendid appliances by no means indi- 

 cate infallibly good sport. I have seen an old bellows mender, with a 

 rod manufactured from superannuated umbrella sticks and a line 

 clumsily put together from the "grey mare's tail," and a cockroach as 

 bait, do remarkably well, when, close by, no sport could be had by the 

 gentleman with his ten guineas' worth of new tackle. 



