152 ANGLING. 



no warm water at hand, place the ends in your mouth and 

 keep them there for some minutes. There are two or 

 three ways of tying strands of gut together, the first and 

 simplest is by what I call the single barrel knot, as given 

 in the first knot in Plate 4. Lay the ends of the gut 

 alongside of one another for an inch and a half or two 

 inches, take a coil round and pass the ends through ; 

 shorten the useless ends as much as you can so as to waste 

 none, draw the knot as tight as you can and cut off the 

 ends, unless you contemplate lashing them to the line with 

 fine silk, as some people do, when leave about the sixth of 

 an inch, and lash that, touching with varnish of course. 

 I sometimes do this with the upper side of such a knot, 

 when I want to tie on over it a dropper fly ; in other cases 

 I find it quite enough, with moderately fine gut, to pull 

 tight when moist, to allow the knot to dry, and then having 

 cut off the ends, touch it with varnish. It is ten to one 

 against its slipping in any ordinary trial ; but with stout 

 salmon gut submitted to heavy strains such knots will 

 sometime slip unless the ends are lashed. The stouter 

 the gut the more liable it is to slip. 



Many persons, to make quite sure, use the double barrel 

 knot. This is the same fashion of knot, only the ends are 

 passed twice through the coil, as shown in Fig. 2, and 

 when drawn tight you must be careful to arrange the coils 

 so that they lie nice and even, and no one rides over the 

 other. There is another knot and a very good one the 

 double tie knot. Lay the gut ends together as before, 

 take hold of one end and tie it round the opposite gut, 

 then take the other end and do the same ; pull the ties 

 home, and then draw the ties together until they are quite 

 firm and strong, and cut off the ends. This is shown in 

 Pig. 3. Some people use this knot for fixing droppers : 



