Rod-making. 235 



rules. That on the end of the butt joint is scant two 

 and a half inches long, and made from metal of the thick- 

 ness of an ordinarily heavy visiting-card, and consider- 

 ably thinner than any other make of ferrule that I have 

 ever noticed on a fly-rod. Yet I am unsparing in my 

 demands upon a rod. When the September sun is just 

 about to vanish behind the hills of Western Maine, there 

 comes a time when all that gambling spirit which actu- 

 ates enterprise in man, takes possession of that angler so 

 fortunate as to be on the ground. He wants no third or 

 fourth prize in the lottery. His casts are for the first, 

 or at least a good second five pounds, no less, will pass; 

 while if beneath the water there is any sense whatever 

 of the fitness of things, it is the plain duty of an eight 

 or ten pounder to offer. 



At such an appointed time, and it is brief at best, 

 minutes are precious, and a two and a half or three pound- 

 er anything which it is humanly possible to derrick 

 with the tackle in use is reeled in and got rid of without 

 the slightest ceremony, and with the reverse of thanks 

 for its attentions. I have done my share of this with 

 simple ferrules, and never yet has one bent or given 

 way. It is to be borne in mjnd that before a tube will 

 bend it must collapse, and if the rod is so put together 

 that the ends of the joints within the metal are close to- 

 gether (say one-eighth to one-sixteenth of an inch, which 

 is quite ample to allow for wear), it is plain that to bend 

 the ferrule will require a power almost equal to the ten- 

 sile strength of the metal itself, a strain to which, in use, 

 no fly-rod is ever even approximately subject. It would, 

 therefore, appear that in this particular the simple fer- 

 rule, properly constructed and applied, is practically quite 

 the equal of its dowelled rival. 



