24 ANGLING 



the body of the fly, it must be tied on after the hackle, 

 but carried round the body before the hackle makes the 

 legs. If the tinsel be required only at the tail of the 

 fly, it must be tied on immediately after the gut and 

 hook are put together, the hackle next, then the body, 

 etc. etc. 



And here we think is the proper place to make an 

 observation or two about the fitness or expediency of 

 making tackle at home. Many things have altered 

 their aspects within the last half-century, and fishing- 

 tackle making and selling is one of these. In former 

 times — and the thing is now the case in remote districts 

 of the country — a fisher was almost laid under a fixed 

 necessity to manufacture his own rods and lines and 

 fiies; but now the London trade, in all the materials 

 connected with the piscatory art, is so wonderfully 

 extended, and has now such a general and easy mode 

 of transacting business in country districts, that it has 

 become a matter of pure prudence and economy whether 

 it is not better to buy than to make one's fishitig outfit. 

 It is now argued — and argued fairly and rationally — 

 that the perfection to which the London tackle-making 

 trade has [brought everythuig they manufacture, and 

 the low prices at which they are disposed of, forbid 

 every man whose time is worth anything, from wasting 

 it on making his own implements of fishing. If all the 

 materials he requires were purchased with a view of 

 making, instead of buying, fishing-tackle, the maker 

 would find the cost much heavier than it would be 

 worth after it was used up, and made ; without taking 

 into consideration that there could not be that skill, 

 neatness, delicacy, and soundness which the tackle- 

 makers of the present day guarantee in every article 

 they send out of their premises. The waste of time is 

 saved by judicious purchases, and one can scarcely 

 hesitate to pronounce that the best home-made rod 

 that was ever made was vastly inferior to those manu- 

 factured by first-rate workmen in the craft, who have 

 made the profession their study, and worked at it all 

 their lives. Such persons become possessed of such 



