452 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
allow of its being tried when they are used. The young 
angler should practise: both methods, and should never 
consider that he, has mastered the first great difficulty, 
until he has acquired the power of dropping his fly upon 
the water tolerably near a given spot by both the above 
methods, and without its being preceded by any portion of 
the linc, or followed by more than a few inches of it. As 
soon as he has thus dropped his fly he begins to draw it 
more or less directly to him, and with a series of jerks, 
varying a good deal according to the fly and the fish to be 
taken. In whipping for small fry, very little more need be 
done than to bring the fly gently and steadily towards the 
bank, and then repeat the cast in a fresh direction. When 
hooked, they may be landed at once, even with a single 
hair-line. Dipping may be practised with the small fry, 
using the natural house-fly, or in fact any small fly; but it 
requires very little art, and I shall therefore postpone the 
description of this species of fishing until the paragraph 
treating of Chub-fishing. 
Almost every species of fish, at_some time or other, 
rises to fly in clear river waters; but the sea-trout is the 
only one which is ever known to take it in the open sea. 
This fish, however, affords great sport in the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence, even out of sight of land, with a large scarlet 
ibis fly, in a mackerel breeze. The pickerel, the bass, 
sometimes the perch, the smelt, and even the shad will rise 
to the fly, and all the small fry in the pools will take a 
midge on the smallest sized hook. Indeed, there is no 
prettier practice for a young hand, than whipping for smelt 
with the red fly, in large clear rivers. 
