50 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 



"My only reply to such a question is use it." 

 4 'That's all very well; but how? Have you no specific 

 advice to give a willing pupil on that head?" 



* 'No ; because while you may be taught by a cook-book 

 how to dress a salad or stew a rabbit, I never knew an 

 angler made by a written recip3. It is no more true that 

 'the proof of the puiding is in the citing' th in that the only 

 way to learn how to angle is to angle. One may be talked 

 to until his head swims about fly-casting and salmon fishing 

 and still make his first cast as awkwardly as if he had never 

 seen a fly or stretched a leader. But those who have had 

 any experience in casting for trout will have no difficulty in 

 casting for salmon. The movements in both are practically 

 the same. The only vital difference is in the weight of the 

 rods, and this difference is practically neutralized by the 

 fact that both hands instead of one are employed in the 

 manipulation of tho rod used in casting for salmon. Dur- 

 ing all my thirty years of exclusively trout or bass fishing I 

 had never used a double-handed rod. When I first launched 

 my canoe on a salmon river I had to float through a mile of 

 water swarming with trout before I reached a pool where I 

 could have an opportunity to cast for salmon. In making this 

 distance I kept my eight-ounce trout rod in active motion, 

 with such results as gave me a surfeit. When this stretch 

 of water was passed, and my Indian gaffer said, 'Trout no 

 more, salmon pool, trout rod no good,' I promptly, but 

 very tremulously, took hold of my salmon rod, which looked 

 ponderous as a weaver's beam and felt as heavy as a hem- 

 lock sapling, and prepared to reach out for the point indi- 

 cated by my Indian mentor. Holding my rod in my left 

 hand, with the butt pressed against my body, I pulled the 

 line from the reel with my right hand, keeping it out by the 

 required quick backward and forward movement until the 

 desired length was obtained, whenl seized the rod with both 

 hands and found myself casting as easily and as steadily as 

 if I had been 'to the manner born.' Although kind friends 

 had given me a score of lessons, the memory of them had ail 

 vanished when the crucial moment came, but by simply 



