CHAP. V. THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 297 



with an ARTIFICIAL FLY, which also I will shew you 

 how to make before I have done : but, first, shall acquaint 

 you, that, with this, you are to angle with a line longer 

 by a yard and a half, or sometimes two yards, than your 

 rod : and with both this and the other in a still day, 

 in the streams, in a breeze that curls the water, in the 

 still deeps, where (excepting in May and June, that the 

 best Trouts will lie in shallow streams to watch for prey, 

 and even then too) you are like to hit the best fish. 1 



For the length of your ROD, you are always to be go- 

 verned by the breadth of the river you shall chuse to 

 angle at : and for a Trout-river, one of five or six yards 

 long is commonly enough ; and longer (though never so 

 neatly and artificially made) it ought not to be, if you 

 intend to fish at ease ; and if otherwise, where lies the 

 sport ? 



Of these, the best that ever I saw, are made in York- 

 shire ; which are all of one piece, that is to say, of se- 

 veral, six, eight, ten, or twelve pieces, so neatly pieced 

 and tied together with fine thread below and silk above 

 as to make it taper like a switch, and to ply with a true 

 bent to your hand. And these, too, are light, being 

 made of fir-wood for two or three lengths nearest to the 

 hand, and of other wood nearer to the top, that a man 

 might, very easily, manage the longest of them that ever 

 I saw, with one hand. And these, when you have given 

 over angling for a season, being taken to pieces and laid 

 up in some dry place, may afterwards be set together 

 again in their former postures, and will be as strait, sound, 

 and good, as the first hour they were made, and being 

 laid in oil and colour, according to your master Walton's 

 direction, will last many years. 



The length of your LINE, to a man that knows how to 



(1) For Fishing with two or more flics : see note on p. 298. 



