PISHING AS A FINE ART. Ill 



southern fly-fishermen ; but I feel sure that if a London 

 tackle-maker would produce some " Bakewell " books, he 

 would benefit the fly-fishing community and himself too. 



But perhaps this is of the nature of a digression, though 

 the art of tackle-making is cognate to " fishing as an art;" 

 and, depend upon it, a very great part of the comfort of 

 an angler, and a great part of his success, is due to having 

 good and artistic tackle. It is part of his art to know 

 what is good tackle, and what suitable for different kinds 

 of fishing ; he should know the various constructions of 

 rods, winches, lines, and hooks, the different qualities of 

 gut, and the merits and demerits of the various articles of 

 an angler's outfit. On all this I could discourse at length, 

 but the ground has been so thoroughly travelled over and 

 exhaustively .described by Messrs. Francis Francis, Chol- 

 mondeley Pennell, and other modern angling authors, that 

 I shall only incidentally refer to such matters in my Notes 

 to follow on our different fresh-water fish. 



A_s there has been a marked progress of late years in 

 the art of tackle-making, so has there been in the art of 

 angling. Fishing may fairly claim to be a " Fine Art." 

 Comparatively speaking, our forefathers used but coarse 

 tackle, and, though they loved the sport, hardly regarded 

 angling as an art. It is difficult to imagine Walton and 

 his fellows angling without a winch, though its use was 

 known to Dame Juliana Berners, who calls it a "renninge 

 vyce." Probably some of them kept a little extra line 

 coiled in the left hand to let out when a big fish was 

 hooked, or used their thumbs for winches, but generally a 

 fish would have been killed by main force — i.e., the 

 strength of the rod and line and the strength of the angler. 

 This is how old Isaak speaks of playing a big fish : — 



