132 TROUT FISHING 



and heavier your rod the less can you appreciate 

 the subtleties of fly fishing. That, at any rate, 

 is how it seems to me. The modern light rod of 

 ten feet which weighs, say, six ounces, is to my mind 

 vastly superior in this respect to the old rod which 

 weighed twelve ounces or more. I do not say 

 definitely that it will stand so much hard work or 

 that it will throw so good a line against a wind, 

 but I do say that it will enable a man to catch more 

 fish, simply because with it he is on more intimate 

 terms with his fly. With such a rod I use a slightly 

 lighter line than I should with a heavier rod, and 

 that of course is a help to delicate fishing. 



I think the evolution of this kind of rod is one 

 of the chief triumphs of tackle-making, and we 

 certainly owe a debt of gratitude to America for 

 stimulating our first interest in it. The slender 

 split-cane rod, weighing little more than half an 

 ounce to the foot, with a resiliency like steel and 

 with what seemed almost miraculous power of 

 casting, was a revelation to some of us at one time. 

 But it has proved that there is no miracle about it, 

 and our own makers now turn out light rods which 

 answer every requirement of the angler's ideal. 

 For all that we owe the impulse to America. So 

 long ago as 1873, when W. C. Prime wrote I Go A- 

 Fishing, our cousins were using seven-ounce rods. 

 Twelve years later Francis Francis, in A Book on 



