224 SCIENCE OF FISHING. 



may be that it would wear out in five years of use, or it 

 might not give the general satisfaction of the more costly 

 article. Again you can get a casting reel for fifty dollars, 

 that is a thing of beauty, and will last several lifetimes a 

 reel that you will take pride in, yet there is a difference of 

 forty or forty-five dollars between this and the standard, 

 medium priced reel. Now, it is for you to decide whether you 

 should pay this high price, for to the average fisherman there 

 would not be that much difference in the actual worth of the 

 two. If I were a wealthy man and were buying a fishing outfit, 

 I would buy the very best, but as it is I must be content with 

 less costly goods. However, I will buy the best that I can 

 afford and try to be content. 



Now it is the same way in regard to rods you may 

 pay a high price for a name, a fine finish, and the knowledge 

 that the rod was made by hand, for many of us cannot tell 

 handwork from machine work in any way except by the 

 price. Say for instance we buy a fine handmade split bam- 

 boo rod, made of the most carefully selected stock, one that 

 bends perfectly, has just the right action, and all that, and 

 we lay out twenty-five or thirty hard earned dollars for it ; 

 the chances are that we have paid more than the rod is 

 worth to us, perhaps more than its intrinsic value, and cer 

 tainly more than a poor man should put into a rod. One 

 costing eight dollars (these figures as well as others given 

 are only approximate and for purpose of illustrating) would 

 have done just as well for actual fishing, and unless we are 

 rod critics we would never find anything wrong with it. It 

 would cast perfectly, for fishing purposes at least, would 

 balance nicely, and to all purposes would be firstrdass. But, 

 then, if we go too low we get something that it is not policy 

 to buy, a rod with the strips sawed out and not selected; as 

 a result the grain runs across the stick in many places; the 

 wood is female bamboo, always inferior to the male stock; 

 there will be knots close together on two or three strips, in 



