24 FISHING GOSSIP. 
must be to everyone, that a rod and tackle equal to 
contend with a fish of 8 or 10 lbs. weight, taken by 
a fly, would be competent to master the same fish 
caught by a loach. There was no casting in the case, 
the whole process being conducted in a boat, so that 
no advantages were to be gained by additional length 
or strength of the rod. The foot-line, however, was 
entirely different from that employed in angling with 
flies, except in the fact of its being made of gut. If 
of single gut, as was sometimes the case, the gut 
should ‘be of the very best and strongest of that kind 
sold as salmon-gut. On the other hand, if this ma- 
terial was not procurable, the gut-twister was called 
into operation ; three fine, long, and evenly matched 
hairs were twisted together in lengths, and these 
united as follows :—Four or five such lengths usu- 
ally went to make a foot-line of 4 or 5 feet long. Fine 
double swivels were placed at each end and in the 
centre. These were attached to the gut-links by the 
latter being simply drawn through the eyes of the 
former, the points of the protruded link being thinned 
a little with the knife, turned down on the main link, 
and then carefully lapped with silk rubbed well with 
shoemaker’s wax ; the union of the other ends of the 
lengths or links of gut was by a single water-knot, 
the waste ends of the gut being trimmed and neatly 
tied down as in the case of the swivels. The double 
water-knot on twisted gut makes clumsy work, and 
