252 CASTING TACKLE AND METHODS 



I have found them at home when it rained gently 

 and when a midsummer thunderstorm shook the 

 earth with Teutonic reverberations; and I have 

 failed utterly, absolutely, ignominiously on all these 

 occasions. Shall we say "luck was poor," and let it 

 go at that? This only I am certain of, hit it right 

 and the rodster will have a morning's sport worth 

 the name. After all, every fish is an unknown and 

 unknowable quantity. Just as we arrive at .a place 

 where we think we know it all, they turn some new 

 trick, evince some new habit, which knocks all of 

 our notions into the proverbial cocked hat. 



As I have already intimated, it is of utmost im- 

 portance to troll slowly. If the reader has ever 

 fished with a hand line he has undoubtedly dis- 

 covered that he has hooked more fish when the boat 

 was coming about, and if he stopped to enquire why, 

 found the answer in the slowing up of the lure. 

 There I received my first lesson in successful trolling. 

 The angler needs to have his lure away down well 

 towards the bottom, for if the fish are near the sur- 

 face he will not resort to trolling, he will cast. Cast- 

 ing is by all odds the most sportsman-like and 

 satisfactory; there is no excuse for resorting to the 

 method described in this chapter when the former is 

 successful. 



If the angler can have a wilderness lake to himself 

 early some morning, slipping about the shores and 

 weed-beds, or seeking out the shallows, the boat 



