PIKE-TACKLE. 21 



I remember some years ago Mr. Bailey, the then most 

 celebrated professor and exponent of the Nottingham style of 

 spinning, sending me for examination some of his flights and 

 traces. All I can say of them — and I have them in my 

 possession still — is that they are altogether too clumsy and too 

 heavy for spinning in rivers or other waters where the pike have 

 had opportunities of seeing a spinning bait tolerably often, and 

 in the Thames they would be practically useless. 



Another serious, and I should say ineradicable, defect of 

 the Nottingham reel is its tendency to 'overrun' itself, thus 

 producing a series of ' complications,' to use a generic rather 

 than a specific term, which, if they did not at critical junctures 

 result in the loss of the fish, are at any rate likely to lead to a 

 frame of mind on the part of the spinner the reverse of equable. 

 Again, with these — un-' checked' — winches there is another 

 danger to be guarded against. If the graduated pressure of 

 the finger be for an instant removed from the reel or line the 

 latter runs out so freely as to produce the eifect of complete 

 slackness. This is an evil greater, perhaps, in its results even 

 than the other, as nothing is more certainly disastrous in spin- 

 ning than a slack line on a running fish, and nothing more 

 likely than the contingency alluded to where fish have to be 

 followed rapidly over ditches or broken ground. These two 

 faults — vices would not be too strong a term — are radical and 

 inherent in the principle of all ' plain ' reels, whether wood or 

 brass. They are found, however, in combination, in their 

 utmost perfection in the so-called ' Nottingham reel. ' ' It would 

 not be wise,' writes a recent author, ' for any fly-fisherman to 

 use Nottingham reels at first ; the manual management of the 

 checking power would take the tyro months to master, and 

 any mismanagement, which is all but inevitable, would be fatal 

 just when the special qualities of these reels should be service- 

 able.' This testimony carries additional conviction, inasmuch 

 as, on the whole, the writer appears to favour the Nottingham 

 reel^at any rate as improved by some recent additions. 



I do not, of course, for a moment expect, or, indeed, wish, 



