SOME TINY WATERS 37 



Here, however, I may touch on a topic which to 

 some extent concerns them, as it concerns all the 

 others, the question of a rod for small stream fly 

 fishing. I have found, and, I think, others would 

 find, that the possession of a really small rod adds 

 immensely to the pleasure and interest, and, in 

 many cases, to the comfort, of angling in tiny waters. 

 I began to fish them with a weapon of about nine 

 feet. Then I came down to eight feet six inches. 

 Then, to cope with a Yorkshire beck which ran 

 mostly under an avenue of bushes, I dropped to 

 six feet six inches, getting a short handle made for 

 the two upper joints of a small greenheart. Later, 

 however, I discovered the rod mentioned before in 

 this chapter, a baby split cane seven feet long, which 

 Hardy Brothers had built to a pattern prescribed 

 by that good French sportsman, Prince Pierre 

 D'Arenberg, and which bears his name. I made 

 myself a present of one of these and am now suited, 

 as they say in domestic circles. The rod weighs 

 something infinitesimal, and is small enough for 

 practically all purposes, and yet it will cast a sur- 

 prisingly long line if you need it, as you sometimes 

 do on the smallest stream. Also, it will handle a 

 fish with tact, a point on which I shall have some- 

 thing to say later, but also, if required, with firmness. 

 At this, I suppose, one ought not to be surprised, 

 if Dr. Mottram's theory, set out in his interesting 



