8 THE TROUT ARE RISING 
would have justified any wag’s grave admonition 
that netting was not allowed in the river. Im- 
provement came when a good friend—the late 
Mr, Charles Hughes, of Iron-Bridge, beloved 
by everybody who knew him—with his kindly 
insistence made me realize the inwardness of the 
game. “Let your back cast de at the back,” he 
would say. Extending the line well behind you, 
without letting it or the gut touch the ground, 
_ gives the necessary pause between the casts, makes 
all the difference in the forward cast. Years after, 
Mr. Hughes’s sound teaching was practically con- 
firmed one afternoon on the lawn at Surrey Lodge, 
Denmark Hill, the hospitable home of Mr. R. B. 
Marston, deacon of the craft and one of our 
first authorities on fishing. In that impromptu 
lesson I had the advantage of two teachers, for 
an ex-president of the Fly Fishers’ Club also 
joined in sage counsel. ‘Keep the body still, 
when casting,” they both enjoined. The brother- 
hood of fishing is more than a phrase: the past- 
masters delight in ‘giving a helping hand. Their 
kindness to me is sincerely acknowledged. Extend 
the line well behind you in the air, and keep the 
body still—these simple, but indispensable, rules 
of casting are here repeated in the hope that other 
novices will also derive pleasure and profit by 
learning them, 
To be an expert fisherman entails the conquest 
of a world of details, the mastery of much that 
is acquired only through long years of practice, 
observation, and experience. It is an apprentice- 
