53 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 



required to make a wise use of the constantly varying con- 

 ditions in which an angler finds himself when casting for 

 salmon. Topsy wasn't brought up she 'grow ed;' and that 

 is the only way to become an expert on salmon waters. 



"1 never knew two anglers who cast exactly alike, while I 

 have seen scores who were the peers of each other. Each 

 has his peculiar attitude, motion and swing; his straight, 

 lateral or sweeping cast, but each reaches his goal with 

 equal precision, if not with equal grace. Each manipulate! 

 his fly on the water, awaits a rise, and strikes and fights his 

 fish after his own fashion, "but certain general principles are 

 adhered to by all, and ail have the same measure of felicity 

 from the beginning to the end of the fray. But whatever 

 their manner of casting and striking and killing, the testi- 

 mony of each will be, that whatever of skill they have was 

 acquired, riot from instructions in the theory of the art, but 

 in the knowledge that came to thorn from actual experience; 

 from all of which I do not wish to be understood as con- 

 demning the honest efforts of honest anglers to transform 

 a novice into an expert by written or verbal instructions 

 I have done a little of both myself but simply to impress 

 the earnest aspirant with ths fact that the only way to 

 learn to cast is to cast, and the only way to appreciate the 

 pleasure available to salmon anglers is to experienc3 it. As 

 no man ever yet became acquainted with the luscious flavor 

 of the creamy flakes of a well-cooked salmon by having some 

 one glowingly describe how deliciously the delectable mor- 

 sels rested upon his own gratified palate, so no man ever yet 

 learned how to cast for salmon, or attained unto a full apprecia- 

 tion of the supreme delight wrapped up in the exercise and 

 in the results which come from it, by being told how to do 

 the one, or by having described to him the ecstacy of the 

 other. " 



