Fly Fishing for Trout. 115 



day, in a well-known river, I took three fish rising 

 under the further bank with a great deep bed of 

 weeds between me and them. I was fishing with 

 fine but strong tackle, and the moment I hooked 

 them I put sufficient strain on to lead them over 

 the weeds (taking them as it were by surprise) 

 into the clear water on my side. The three fish 

 weighed nine pounds and a quarter. I hooked 

 another under the same bank which from the feel 

 was larger, but he was too quick for me and got 

 under the weeds, and though I lost him he did not 

 break me. If I had been using the very fine 

 tackle which some of my brother fishermen praise 

 so much, and with which no doubt in clear streams 

 without weeds is very killing, I believe I should 

 have lost every one of these fish through getting 

 entangled in the weeds. 



As to the strain to be put upon a fine cast, a 

 friend (a first-rate fisherman) writes me thus : 

 "As to the strain you may put upon a fish, it 

 depends less, I think, on the relative strength of 

 the cast than on the steadiness of the strain. The 

 danger to a fine cast is not, in fact, in my ex- 

 perience, in the strain, but in the moment of 

 striking, and, of course, in an entanglement of 

 weeds, though I am free to confess that with very 

 fine casts (which I prefer) my line has sometimes 

 ^failed owing to the dead weight of the fish in the 



