SALMOK FISHING IN ENGLAND 



the air ; to set forth his Tackles according to the times and seasons to goe 

 for his pleasure and some profit.' 



So says Master Barker is his Art of Angling, Tvritten in 1653. 

 This tackle is the rod, Une and flies, leaders, — subjects, texts for a 

 thousand books and serilions, and while it is taking coals to 

 Newcastle or holding the candle up to the sun, to describe it 

 to the reader, I may say that the line must be the best, Number 

 2 or 3, plaited oiled silk salmon line obtainable. There should 

 be thirty-five yards of this, and back of it a finer line perhaps to 

 fill the reel, a ' back Me,' used on many large reels. The leader 

 ' trace,' the unspun silk of the silk- worm, should be round, clear 

 and transparent, and from sixteen to eighteen inches long, 

 double or single. If you wish to make the sport easy and depart 

 from time-honoured usage, use an American multiplier ; but the 

 typical ^English salmon reel should be employed, a plain click 

 reel at least three and a half to four and a half inches, outside 

 diameter, with a width of barrel of from one and a half to one and 

 three-quarter inches. One should read, for the particulars of 

 these details, the works of Mr. Cholmondeley PenneU, his Modern 

 Practical Angler and The Sporting Fish of Great Britain ; the 

 hook, a Pennell, O'Shaughnessey or Limerick. In my own 

 experience the O'Shaughnessey is the best aU-round hook in fresh 

 or salt water, but^ of course open to discussion. 



The rod is a most important factor, as an angler comes to 

 love an old one and to appreciate its record and gallant deeds. 

 My first suggestion would be to have the best and only the 

 best of everything. A typical rod might to-day be eighteen 

 feet in length, though I have seen and fished with one on the 

 Tweed of nearly twenty-two feet. On the Eibble the rod I used 

 was not over fifteen feet in length, and I found that with it, I 

 could cast a fly from Lancashire into Yorkshire. In point of 

 fact, with a five or six-ounce rod an angler can take a one hundred- 

 pound fish. I have taken seventeen, and twenty-pound yellow- 

 tails on my eight-ounce ten-foot split-cane trout rod, and could 



