298 SALMON AND TROUT. 
fibres forming its wings and legs. Let your trout flies be 
played upon a similar principle, but more variously, and more 
down stream. Let the tail fly seem struggling in vain to resist 
the current which carries him down, and the.near dropper dip 
enticingly as if in laying eggs. A tremulous motion of the 
wrist is sometimes most alluring. In the stillest waters, on a 
warm day, I have killed good fish by throwing far, and then 
suffering my whole cast to sink ere I moved my flies. Trout 
will take them thus sunk if they do not see the ripple of the 
line at the surface. 
We will now suppose your fish to have risen—the next 
point is to hook him, if indeed your line is not so taut that 
you feel he has hooked himself. To do this you must ‘strike,’ 
as the common term is ; which has been correctly, if not satis- 
factorily, explained as ‘doing something with your wrist which 
it is not easy to describe.’ Is this ‘something’ to be done 
quickly or slowly, sharply or gently? Not to distinguish too 
minutely, we would say, strike a salmon more slowly than a 
trout, a trout than a grayling, a lake fish than a river one, and, 
generally speaking, a large fish than a small one. As to the 
degree of force, a gentle twitch generally suffices—at all events, 
more is dangerous with any but very strong tackle. 
Note especially, that in order to strike quick, you must 
strike gently. This requires illustration. Lay your fly rod on 
a long table, place a cork eighteen inches in front of the top ; 
grasp it as in fly fishing, and strike hard, making the butt the 
pivot. The cork will be knocked off by the forward spring of 
the upper half of the rod before any backward action.can take 
" place, and thus much time will have been lost before the line 
can be in the smallest degree tightened.!_ Remember, too, the 
great increase of risk to your tackle when the line is thus 
slackened before sustaining a severe jerk. Nine fish out of ten 
1 The remark naturally suggests itself that, if so, a strong forward move- 
ment from the butt of the rod, by producing a reverse action at the point, 
would be the quickest mode of striking. And this is mathematically certain; 
but a trout so hooked would be immediately released by the slackening of the 
line when the backward reaction took place, 
