12 A BOOK ON ANGLING 



rod, and a lighter material can be employed. It is astonishing 

 what a difference in the wear and tear of rod-tops the addition 

 or subtraction of a dozen or so of shot on the line makes. For 

 example, suppose your dozen shot weigh only the eighth of an 

 ounce. Suppose you only strike sixty times in an hour, which 

 is very far under the mark, and suppose you fish a good day of, 

 say, twelve hours. The addition or subtraction of these twelve 

 shot will have given your fragile rod-top eighty-four ounces 

 more to jerk up in the course of one day. It will be seen, then, 

 that this point of meting the weight of your tackle as near as 

 possible to the requirements of the stream is worthy of much 

 consideration. I have often seen roach and dace-fishers fishing 

 in an easy stream with great heavy floats, carrying perhaps 

 near half an ounce of shot, when they could have fished it 

 with a porcupine quill. The consequence is that the extra shot 

 make a splash at every strike, and they are so thick and large 

 that the fish can easily discern them and thus they alarm one- 

 half and all the best of their fish. I like upright rings to all my 

 bottom rods, finding them safe and more convenient to the line. 

 In general bottom-fishing a very fine gut foot line is prefer- 

 able to single horsehair. By means of passing the strand of gut 

 through a machine and so reducing it, tackle makers have been 

 enabled to bring it down to almost any fineness ; far finer, 

 indeed, than horsehair. This is called drawn gut, but if the 

 angler can obtain the gut of sufficient fineness in its natural 

 state, i.e. without being drawn, it is better in every respect, 

 being much stronger and infinitely more durable ; as in 

 drawing it, the hard outside surface which protects the gut is 

 shaved off, and nothing but the central and pithy part is left. 

 Drawn gut can easily be distinguished from natural gut at the 

 first glance. It is dull in colour instead of bright and shining, 

 and when in the coil is far less springy and hard if bent. It 

 soon frays away, and a very few times of using rots it, whereas 

 a really good sound undrawn gut line, if properly used, will last 

 for months. It is not possible, however, always to get really 

 fine undrawn gut lines of first quality, and the drawn gut, which 

 can be had of any fineness, is certainly far preferable to hair in 

 point of strength. * Many roach-fishers, however, still use single 

 hair. Now, hair has this objection, viz. it is so elastic that 

 whenever you strike a good fish the line will spring to such a 

 degree that the hook often fails to fix itself properly. Added to 

 which, from its lack of strength and liability to crack at knots, 



* See note on page 233 about modern substitutes for gut. ED. 



