THE SALMON ROD AND FLIES. 147 



described the principle on which a rod should be made, and 

 the material of which it should be constructed. A salmqn 

 rod should be from sixteen to eighteen feet long. Though 

 not one of the shortest or weakest of mankind, I have 

 found the twenty-feet rod sometimes become too tiresome 

 and unwieldy for daily use. A rod eighteen feet long at 

 the outside, with a top of greenheart or of split bamboo, 

 springing gracefully from top to butt, balanced with a 

 winch containing from eighty to a hundred yards of stout 

 line, is one that would delight the heart of the most ardent 

 brother of the angle. The winch may be one of those con- 

 taining a break spring, or what the makers call a spring 

 washer. The new composition reel, which is at once 

 light, compact, easily worked, not deranged by heat or 

 water, seems to have every essential quality of a good 

 reel, though time alone can prove its endurance. The run- 

 ning line should be of plaited silk, and the casting line of 

 the strongest gut — the three-ply twisted is generally recom- 

 mended. The fly-cast should be of the strongest single 

 gut, well tested, and selected with great care. • The lengths 

 may be joined together with the single fisherman's knot; 

 but the knot elsewhere described, with a buffer whipping, 

 is the best of all. Salmon flies are dressed somewhat dif- 

 ferently to those used for trout. They are so whipped as 

 to leave a small but strong loop of stout gut at the extreme 

 end of the shank, close to the head of the fly. The end of 

 the fly-cast is slipped through this, and knotted with a 

 single knot ; a running hitch-knot is then made round the 

 the gut, and, when drawn tight, makes a strong neat com- 

 pact knot which, while firm, admits of the fly being changed 

 easily when required. Some anglers attach a drop-fly some 



