FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 

 Single gut is a beautiful material; but, like certain other beautiful 

 creatures, it is treacherous. It retains its beauty in old age ; but all its virtue 

 departs with youth. Treble -gut casts maybe trusted through three or four 

 years, but an infinity of discomfiture would be avoided if every scrap of 

 single gut were burnt at the end of every fishing season. It costs something 

 to do this, but probably not half as much as a man's cartridges in a single 

 day's cover -shooting, which he blazes away without considering the 

 expense. The best economy in single gut is to buy or make it in casts of 

 not more than 4^ feet which can be looped to 2^ feet of treble gut next the 

 reel -line. Then, if you are lucky in getting the right stuff, it may last you 

 through the best part of a season. I have landed forty-six salmon on one 

 single gut-cast; on the other hand, I have lost fish which were fighting in 

 a most reasonable manner through new, or at least newly -bought, single gut 

 parting in an unaccountable way. 



If the angler allows his gillie to put together his gear, it is ten chances 

 to one that he will find that the gut casting -line has been attached to 

 the reel -line by the clumsy expedient shown in Fig. 2, Plate VI . I could hardly 

 believe my eyes when I read the recommendation of this fastening at 

 page 26 of "Dry-Fly Fishing," for that excellent work is from the pen 

 of Mr F. M. Halford, a master of the craft of trout -fishing, well known 

 to readers of the "Field" newspaper under the pseudonym of "Detached 

 Badger." Aliquando dormitat Homerus — ^the greatest men have their moments 

 of weakness ; it must have been in one of these that this high authority 

 was lent to the lubberly hitch which local fishermen are so prone to use. 

 The workmanlike way of attaching the cast is to pass the free end of the 

 reel -line through the loop of the gut and to form the indispensable figure- 

 of-eight knot (Fig. 1, Plate VI). Mr Halford's hitch is safe enough, but 

 it is not nearly so neat and, in fishing fine water, is apt to make an un- 

 desirable wake. 



Now as to the substitutes for gut above referred to. First as to the 

 material known as Talerana, which is understood to be some preparation 

 of silk. It is absurdly cheap, costing about 2s. 6d. for fifty yards; it is of 

 extraordinary strength, and it is knotless. I realized its merits in fight- 

 ing a twenty -pound Spey salmon which was bent upon running down 

 stream into a mass of timber that lay across the fairway. Had the fish 

 succeeded, he must have smashed the line; so I thought that if there was 

 to be a smash, it should take place in the open, I held him with all my 

 might, exerting a force which would have been impossible with single 

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