100 ANGLING. 



boggled! moral, the angler should only cast so much 

 line as he has perfect command over not a foot more. 

 Such line as he can raise off the water cleanly, smartly, 

 and without drag or effort, he will probably be able to 

 command a fish well with in the water ; but when it comes 

 to tearing the line out of the water by the roots, as it 

 were, the length of line out is unmanageable and bad. 

 When a fish rises, much depends upon the position the 

 angler occupies with respect to the fish, as to how he must 

 strike. If the fish be below him, down stream, the line 

 will probably be fully extended, and will weigh on the 

 rod top. At such a time a very slight twitch indeed of 

 the rod top is enough to fasten the fly. A heavy tug will 

 probably result in a break, and the fish will go off with 

 the fly in his mouth. When the fish is upstream, and the 

 line coming home, it is sure to be more or less in a bag, 

 and the angler must strike more or less smartly to over- 

 come the slack line. Experience and practice alone can 

 tell him how hard he ought to strike, and often when he 

 knows this full well his hand will not second his desire ; 

 but on a sudden and unexpected rise he will hit too hard 

 the more particularly so if he is addicted to salmon 

 fishing, and the various methods used for coarse fish, when 

 the tackle is much less fine, and the striking usually much 

 harder. 



To be a perfect trout fisher, to my mind, a man should 

 follow no other branch of fishing. It spoils his hand if 

 he does. I myself, from the practice of striking so hard 

 in both salmon, pike, and other fishing, used to lose 

 numbers of fish and flies in the course of the season ; and 

 what made it the more vexing was that they were nearly 

 always the best and heaviest fish. At Winchester they 

 used to have a sort of proverb about me. "Why, he 



