May, 1919 
FOREST AND 
STREAM 
217 
through the tree was soothing to his tired 
nerves and the deep shade a comfort. 
Across to the west in a swamp a lot of 
crows set up a noisy cawing, swooping 
in and out and the man saw a hawk sit- 
ting in a tree and it called to his mind 
many such scenes he had witnessed when 
a boy. 
Such matters had almost escaped his 
memory. Then he began wondering why 
and when the enmity between the crow 
and hawk began and he almost forgot 
the cork float on the water. He looked 
in time to see it disappear and the old 
impulse to jerk quick and hard was 
with him but he thought better and 
tightened well on the line and found a 
fish was hooked. His pliant birch at 
last threw the victim out, which flopped 
on the grass just as it had done when 
the man was a boy. 
“Catfish,” he said aloud, “well; why 
not?” Gingerly he took up the fish, well 
remembering what that set of spine 
rays at the sides and at the dorsal fin 
could do to the hand if carelessly 
handled. It was not a large fish and 
not really small, just th^ average size 
and the man wondered how many like 
it he had taken from the same pool 
when as a boy he had fished there. 
( ( EE, Mister are they bitin’?” 
V x said a voice and the man, half 
startled, looked up to see a boy 
very like himself when of the same age. 
One trouser leg was rolled up to the 
knee, the other was down to near the 
ankle; a much faded shirt and a straw 
hat which had evidently been in contact 
with a bumble-bee’s nest completed his 
makeup. There were freckles a pjenty 
on his nose and cheeks. He carried a 
tin can with worms in it in one hand 
and a maple pole in the other. The man 
greeted him pleasantly as he ap- 
proached. 
The boy turned the fish over carefully 
with his toe and said: “There’s plenty 
of ’em in here an’ they’ll bite better 
to’ards night,” then seated himself 
cross legged on the grass. The man 
and boy were friends from that mo- 
ment. Silently the boy impaled the 
worm to his liking and the man noticed 
how nicely he adjusted the cork on the 
line so that the baited hook would just 
clear the bottom. 
“No novice that,” said the man men- 
tally. He noticed too that the maple 
pole was carefully decorated by strip- 
ping the bark clean in sections of six 
inches, then leaving the bark on for two 
inches and so on to the end. “Seems 
tough we might have a shower,” re- 
marked the boy as he removed a pump- 
kin seed from his hook and looked 
around at the sky, “ ’twon’t hurt nothin’ 
can’t get much wet and the fish will bite 
better. This old maple is a heap of 
shelter when it rains.” The man saw 
the boy was inclined to be talkative and 
he encouraged him. “I lost an ol’ whop- 
per pike here last week,” he continued, 
“was tired catchin’ sunnies so I cut off 
the belly of one an’ left the fins on an’ 
went skitterin’ right there by the spat- 
ter dock, an’ smack he took it an’ most 
jerked me in. Gosh, I bet he would 
weigh most four pounds, mebbe five.” 
Then the man made a mental note that 
the belly of a sunny, with fins left on, 
was a good lure for pickerel. 
T here was action almost all the 
afternoon for both boy and man. 
While no record fish were taken 
still it was “fishin’ ” as the boy put it, 
and the man was enraptured. The catch 
was mostly “catties,” as the boy called 
them, -with a sprinkling of sunnies and 
a few perch. Toward evening the man 
tried the sunfish lure, after the boy had 
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 254) 
A CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM 
THE IDEAL ROD MUST HAVE A POWERFUL BUTT. PLENTY OF CANE 
IN THE CENTRAL SECTION . AND A DELICATELY TAPERING TIP 
By R. L. M. 
I N the August, 1918, issue of Forest 
AND Stream “E. B. A.” has written a 
very courteous criticism of my advice 
about a rod for Dry Fly Fishing. The 
late Wm. Halford had used for years 
heavy rods but towards the end he be- 
gan to use lighter weapons. But even 
his last rod, the 1912 model, is I believe 
too heavy for use with really fine lead- 
ens. Mr. Halford never used anything 
but the “finest undrawn” points. At 
least that is the impression I gathered 
from conversations with his head keeper 
and some of his friends and acquaint- 
ances. 
Now the “finest undrawn” has a di- 
ameter of approximately .009 of an inch ; 
whereas “XXX drawn” and “XX drawn” 
have respective diameters of .007 and 
.0085 of an inch. 
I used the term “Scotch Taper” as 
that is, or used to be, a trade descrip- 
tion of a taper that becomes more pro- 
nounced towards the end. The rod that 
I use now is 9 ft. 6 in. long and has a 
total weight of 6 oz. The two top joints 
weigh together 2 oz. 
The diameter of the rod just back of 
the binding that holds the agate tip in 
place is 75/1000 of an inch. 
It is rather difficult to get the exact 
diameters of a hexagonal rod but in the 
accompanying illustration I have shown 
the approximate taper of this rod. 
The diameter at the lower end is 
395/1000 of an inch and at the upper 
end is 75/1000 as already stated. 
I have drawn a straight line connect- 
ing these two diameters, and if the rod 
possessed an even taper from butt to 
tip it would coincide with this line. It 
will be noticed however, that the rod 
begins to taper at a steeper angle than 
that of the even taper line; it then fiat- 
tens out and tapers more gradually 
through the middle section; ending up 
with a sharper taper towards the tip. 
We have here practically the ideal 
conditions ; a powerful butt, plenty of 
cane in the central section but tapering 
to a delicate tip, as shown in the cut. 
The deviations between a true taper 
and the taper of this rod are magnified 
five times. I took measurements with a 
micrometer on an average every 6 in. 
of length. I use an I D I double tapered 
line the weight of which is 0 oz. 13 dms. 
Tapered lines of this particular brand 
viz., the “Corona Superba” (Hardy 
Bros.) come in four sizes, viz., (all 35 
yds. long) : 
Extra fine I. E. I. 0 oz. 9 dms.; Fine 
I. D. I., 0 oz. 13 dms.; Medium I. C. I. 0 
oz. 15 dms.; Heavy I. B. I., 1 oz. 3 dms. 
W HERE I fish a strong wind gen- 
erally begins to blow about 1 or 2 
p. m. and I find that the I. D. I. 
line is rather light when the wind gets 
up. Consequently I am ordering a me- 
dium line for next season’s fishing. 
I generally use XXX points and J do 
not find that my rod is too powerful 
for them. I have only had the rod a 
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 246) 
