4 FLY FISHING AND SPINNING 



over 1,800 clients. This work, supplemented by a most 

 exhaustive study of the whole science of casting, has shown 

 me that it is possible to teach anyone an accurate and 

 perfect style of casting a fly, with or against the wind, in 

 both the wet and dry fly methods, with both hands, in three 

 or four lessons, each of one hour's duration. Further, this 

 experience has shown me that if the country be fairly clear 

 between the rod and the position of the trout, that a fisher- 

 man should under almost any circumstances be able to cast 

 his fly accurately to a fish, so long as it be within a reasonable 

 distance. 



The clients whom I have coached have varied in age, 

 from the youth of seven to the veteran of seventy-five, and 

 while at least half of this number have come to me as 

 complete novices in the art of fly casting, the other half 

 have been more or less hardened in such faulty methods of 

 casting that the pleasure which they should have experienced 

 when fishing has been minimized by their inability to 

 present their fly to the trout accurately, delicately, instantly 

 and effectively, and my success in making them cast to 

 their own and my satisfaction has more than repaid me 

 for the difficulties I have had to encounter when coaching 

 them. 



The beginner should consider the saving in time and 

 material which he will effect by first acquiring the ability 

 to cast a fly, also the satisfaction he will feel in knowing 

 that when he arrives at the water-side he will not appear 

 as a novice to his brother angler. 



I am convinced that the greatest success in fishing will 

 attend the fisherman who, both in favourable and un- 

 favourable circumstances, can with certainty cast the 

 lightest and most accurate fly, and that to learn this will 

 take him but a short time if he be properly coached ; that, 

 without the assistance of a master in the art of casting, 



