86 



the file at a point on each side of the ' catch ' would facilitate the 

 process of lifting up with the finger nails. 



It is fair to add that my favourable opinion of the spring-clasp 

 joint is given only after examination in camera, and that I have 

 not had an opportunity of putting it to the test of actual work. 

 Mr. Gregson, however, has shown me a number of laudatory testi- 

 monials from fishermen who have done so. 



REELS. 



If Reels have not in the matter of ' improvement ' quite kept 

 pace with the improvements in Rods, they are yet prodigiously in 

 advance of the unmechanical windlasses with which our forbears, 

 in the not very distant past, were content to reel in the victims 

 of their prowess. But I will not slay the slain twice over, or 

 evoke, merely for the purpose of exorcising them, the ghosts of 

 ' Pirns,' " multipliers," " winch-winders " and other similar lusus 

 natura, which if not actually as extinct as the dodo, soon will 

 be. ... 



Of modernised improved reels or winches that which presents, 

 perhaps, the greatest actual novelty is Slater's* " Combination 

 Reel," so called because uniting the qualifications of a Notting- 

 ham reel and an ordinary plain or check reel. This it does with- 

 out diminishing the efficiency of either. It is also vastly superior 

 to the old-fashioned open Nottingham reel, in that being con- 

 fined to the barrel by transverse bars the line cannot be 

 perpetually ( winding off ; or I should say ' twisting off the reel 

 proprio motu when not wanted, and hitching its loose coils round 

 the reel itself and everything else in its vicinity. 



Nottingham fishing apart, however, the reel is applicable to all 



kinds of angling, and being exceptionally light, as well as simple 



in construction, presents advantages in many directions ; but it is 



more especially to the Pike-spinner in the ' Thames style,' who 



* Of Newark-on-Trent. 



