THE ANGLER AND HUNTSMAN 87 



Endless pages have been written on what to do aii,d not 

 to do in bait casting, but here we will try to boil it down to 

 a few practical hints and in reading these remember that 

 perfection in casting is simply a matter of how well you re- 

 member and how intensely you apply the four P's Pa- 

 tience, Practice, Precision, and Perseverance. 



The Creator gave you a wrist, supple, quick and active ; 

 a forearm, with its power to grip and an upper-arm, with 

 its muscles for pushing and pulling. The wrist and fore- 

 arm were given you for casting; the upper arm for holding 

 the fish remember that, always. 



Casting, practically speaking, should be accomplished 

 from the elbow r down ; this is really the only part of the arm 

 that should be brought into play. Many authorities even 

 go so far as to advocate strapping the beginner's upper-arm 

 to the body in order to confine all the action to the fore-arm 

 and wrist. 



Casting consists of five distinct operations the back- 

 ward stroke, the forward stroke, a short period of waiting 

 for the bait to carry out, shifting the rod to the other hand 

 and, finally, retrieving. 



One's success, of course, depends a great deal on the 

 tackle the reel, the rod, the line and the lure. To a large 

 extent the types in these five factors vary according 'to the 

 style of work the caster is attempting to do. 



A heavy lure can be worked successfully with a slow- 

 acting, heavy rod and a stiff-running reel with heavy line. 

 On the other hand a light lure necessitates a free-running 

 reel, a light line and a quick-acting rod by quick acting we 

 mean what anglers usually term "whip" or resiliency. All 

 factors dove-tail in, one with another, so that the caster 

 must adapt his tackle to fit the class of work he wants 



This is why so many seasoned anglers always carry 

 two complete outfits with them in the boat. One consists 

 usually of a rather long, light rod and a soft braid line for 

 casting light lures, such as Buck-tails, spinner hooks, flies 



