ROD FOR LAKE-FISHING. 307 



the wielding of easily, and which at every cast looks as if 

 it would carry him clean off his legs. I remember an old 

 Highlander who was my gillie looking on at little Jorkins, 

 height five feet two, with a rod very nearly four times as long 

 as himself. ' What d'ye think of that, Donald ? ' says I. 

 ' Weel, sir ! ' says Donald, ' a was thenken that if there was 

 just a wee bittock mair o' rod and another hunner' yards 

 o' line or sae it'd fesh the little gentleman fine.' And 

 not only does it look badly, but it works badly. A rod two 

 or three ounces heavier or inches longer than is comfortable 

 to the angler, tells dreadfully between the shoulders and 

 on the loins in a long day's fishing ; and it is useless to 

 suppose that practice will make it come much easier ; a 

 man who is overweighted is overweighted, and all the 

 practice in the world will only serve to do harm instead of 

 good, to strain instead of to strengthen. Even a rod that 

 seems at the first grasp light and short will become heavy 

 enough, and long enough too, in a long day's work. My 

 advice, therefore, to the young salmon-angler is, not to 

 overweight himself in his choice of a rod at the outset, but 

 to work up to a heavier and longer weapon, which practice 

 and time may eventually enable him to manage. Some- 

 thing, too, depends upon the kind of fishing he is going 

 to undertake. If it be boat-fishing upon a lake, a fifteen- 

 foot rod is quite long enough, so that there be plenty of 

 stuff in the but and the lower part of the next joint, for 

 lake-fish often run and pull tremendously. 



The most sporting fish I ever hooked in the whole 

 course of my life was a fish of twelve pounds, which I 

 hooked from the shore on Loch More at Thurso. I never 

 saw such a fish ; he was a regular flyer, and was more out of 

 the water than in. Plunging and leaping from the water 

 as dolphins are always depicted as doing, particularly on 

 signboards, he took out clear, without stopping for a second, 

 over one hundred yards of line ; and, had I not chanced 



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