140 The American Salmon-fisherman. 



The fly will then have traversed the pool from a line 

 A abreast the canoe on one side (see preceding figure), 

 to a line _Z? abreast of the canoe on the other side, fol- 

 lowing a succession of circular arcs C in so doing, of 

 which the angler is the centre, and the respective radii of 

 which are the length of the rod plus the quantity of line 

 in use at the time. Thus every fish in that quite extended 

 area has had a chance at the fly and can complain of no par- 

 tiality on the part of the angler, which is the end in view. 



Having thus described with his fly the most distant 

 arc conveniently possible,* he begins to reel in. Instantly 



* The longest cast of record with a salmon-rod in this country is 

 131 feet, by Mr. H.W. Hawes, at Central Park, October, 1884, with an 

 eighteen-foot split-bamboo rod. In England, Major J. P. Traherne is 

 credited with a cast of 136 feet. Mr. Hawes stood about 30 feet from 

 the bank, upon a platform raised one foot above the water, and cast 

 parallel with the shore. He was credited only with the actual dis- 

 tance which intervened between the edge of the platform and where 

 his fly struck the water, measured upon a graduated rope stretched 

 perfectly straight, close beside which he cast. A very few inches 

 would mark the limit of possible error. Since we are informed 

 that the distance credited to Major Traherne was determined, not 

 by the distance he actually covered, but by the distance which it 

 was assumed that he had covered determined by straightening his 

 line and measuring that, I am decidedly inclined to regard Mr. 

 Hawes' cast as the longer. Of all the fly-casting I have ever seen, I 

 consider this performance of Mr. Hawes as the most remarkable. 

 Not so much does the enormous length of the cast induce this opin- 

 ion, as the manner in which it was. done, and the physique of the 

 man who did it. Mr. Hawes was at that time a man of very slender 

 build, and with a wrist as slight as that of a woman. Rod and line 

 worked in his hands with the precision of a faultless machine. 

 Even when at the extreme of his cast, his back-fly was some 25 feet 

 above the water. Taking all the circumstances into consideration, 

 it was certainly a most remarkable triumph of skill over matter. 



