CLEAR WATER WORM FISHING 107 



sight; careful selection of suitable water; judicious 

 wading; and painstaking preparation of the bait. 



The gut cast should be three yards long and 

 tapered to 3X. A light line is often advised, but 

 personally I prefer the same line I use for fly a 

 Hardy Corona. Too fine a line, with a long, gut 

 cast at the end of it, is difficult to manage, as there 

 are seldom more than sixteen to eighteen feet out, 

 including the cast. Moreover, the line should be 

 kept out of the water as much as possible, and, 

 frequently, the top-end of the gut cast itself. 



In casting a well-scoured worm there is no 

 necessity whatever to be ladylike. Naturally one is 

 conscious that the worm is there, but otherwise the 

 throw can be made as when fly fishing, by dropping 

 the rod-point a trifle nearer the water, and recovering 

 the floating line by raising it gradually, until the 

 downward flow of the worm has completed its 

 natural course. 



Pause a moment after the worm alights, and if, in 

 spite of this, your rod-point jerks back at the finish 

 discard it, and use something stiffer. Once, when 

 fishing with a friend, we saw fish rising in still, 

 deepish water, under trees. As an experiment I 

 cast a worm amongst them, and, when it touched 

 the water, I kept my hand quite still without any 

 attempt being made to raise the rod. This worm 



