LINES AND REELS 13 



many good fish, hooks, and much time are lost both in playing 

 the fish and in repairing losses. Still, as I have said, many 

 excellent fishers (for roach particularly) do employ it, and it 

 certainly is a very pretty bit of sport to kill a roach of a pound 

 and a half in a nice eddy with a single hair. Young fishermen 

 should always go through a course of single-hair fishing. 

 Nothing contributes to give them such a delicate touch and 

 such an accurate perception of the exact amount of strain their 

 rods and tackles will bear as fishing with single hair. And no 

 bottom-fisher is worth the name who cannot (if his fish be well 

 hooked and tackle sound) kill a two-pound roach in a sharp 

 stream with a single hair. Gut should be stained slightly to 

 suit the water, and a very pale green and light amber are the 

 only colours ever required. It is the custom to stain gut of a 

 deep ink blue, but this colour is far more discernible in the 

 water than the plain undyed gut is. Gut is of two sorts, good 

 and bad. Good gut can be easily told by either the eye or the 

 touch. Good gut should be round, clear, bright, hard, even 

 in size, and almost colourless. Bad gut is flat, greasy, dull, 

 raffy, or rough and frayed, uneven in size, and of a green 

 tinge ; indeed the greener it is the worse it is. This is the gut 

 that is chiefly used for drawing purposes. Bad gut may often 

 be had for a little money, but it is never cheap to the angler. 

 When not using it, always as much as possible keep your gut 

 from the light, for damp hardly rots it sooner than sunlight. 



The best reels for bottom-fishing are the plain reels with 

 a light check. Do not have a multiplier even at a gift. It 

 is an abomination.* In using hair from a punt, unless you hold 

 the line loose in your hand, the check will be almost too much, 

 and a plain winch is preferable. Your winch should hold forty 

 or fifty yards of fine line. This running or reel line should 

 be of very fine dressed silk ; undressed, it is apt, when wet, to 

 cling about the rod and rings, and it also rots sooner. (In 

 the Nottingham style undressed lines are required.) Never 

 use any mixture of horsehair in your reel line, as it is so apt to 

 knot and tangle that it is always catching in something. In 

 using the long cane rods mentioned above, the Lea fishers do 

 not often use a reel or running line at all, but simply fasten their 

 lines to the eye of the rod- top. When a good fish is hooked 

 they play him for a time with the whole rod, which, from its 



* The author might be of a different opinion now. Multiplying reels of 

 American make are highly praised by those who use them, and are reckoned 

 indispensable in tarpon fishing, ED. 



