fold an angler, the expertest, put a rod into his hand, and (forbidding him to apply the test of feel to the shape, hexagonal or round) ask him to judge of the rod by the casting power of it, and nine times out of ten he will be wrong in his guess as to the material used in its build. The clever angler, if he is driven into a corner, can do wonders with an indifferent rod; and, on the other hand, the finest product of the manufacturer's skill avails little in the hands of a duffer. It is beyond human ingenuity to make a rod that will make an angler. The rod is the test of the angler, and equally the angler is the test of the rod. What is best for one is not necessarily best for another. Hear then this counsel, O novice! If you would be fitted with a rod, place yourself in a good manufacturer's hands, put his advice to the test for yourself at the river-side, judge sagaciously between your own experience and the opinion of any expert who offers one, and turn a deaf ear to all second-hand bigots, Finally, having made an excellent choice beware of becoming a bigot of that choice in turn, A counsel of perfection, no doubt; for which of us is free from original sin?

Pass now to the angler's line. Here, wonderful to say, there is unanimity as to material. Now that excellent lines of pure silk can be bought at a low price, the only reason for preferring the old silk-andhair has been removed; while for some inexplicable reason the faddists have fought more

shy of plaited wire than generally they do of suchlike innovations. No; the cause in which the line bigots are found actively taking sides is that of Taper-line v. Level-line, and a complicate cause it is. The level-line explains itself. The taper-line, I may say for the benefit of any reader, not a fisher, who has honoured us with his company so far, may be either a line with a single taper or a line with a double taper. There are thus three great communions of of line bigots; but since a a taper, where used, varies in grade with every style of sport and may vary in position in any one style, there are as many bodies of dissent from the taper communions as there are sixteenths of an inch of line about which to disagree. The argument for the single taper is that the line ought to be a true extension of the rod, and theoretically it is unanswerable. the other hand, the double taper gives increased power in casting. For long casting, especially on heavy, sluggish streams, where you have to get well over the fish, the double taper is often invaluable. I have found it so, but I have found also that with the double taper there is a double drag on the cast and a pull which prevent the correct extension and fall which the level line gives. Perfection of close plaiting of the silk line has supplied in great measure the weight and power found in the taper, without causing that imperfection in alighting to which I refer. I am a levelliner, therefore, but none of

On

your bigoted kind, for were I to go down to the Darenth to morrow it would be with a double taper-line in my equipment. Once more, it is a question of conditions. Only, I find it difficult to conceive the conditions that would justify the far from uncommon practice of using the essentially dry-fly (that is, tapered) line with the essentially wet-fly (that is, more lissom) rod.

The taper-cast, like the taperline, is essentially dry-fly equipment, but sometimes a cast of hair is substituted for it; and this introduces to us a pretty variety, known as the Hairy Bigot, which is found in greatest numbers in Yorkshire. It feeds almost entirely on hairs from the tails of young stallions, and the rarity of its occurrence among us is due to the increasing difficulty it has in finding that form of sustenance. My own belief is that the hairy bigot is a survival of the first flight of that graceful and charming species, the FlyFishers. Let me explain more particularly. The earliest anglers to make a reputation by the use of the fly (if I am right) were satisfied with comparatively small fish, and when they found the trout becoming educated they very wisely and successfully tried for them with a hair cast. The fame of it spread through the country-side and beyond it; anglers everywhere took to using hair, and on mountain burns and on streams like those in the west of England, where the fish run small (mainly because the anglers there do not let them

grow big), in fact anywhere for half-pounders, the angler to-day will do very wisely in following that example. The hair-bigot, of course, does anything but wisely in using it in rivers where the fish run to as many pounds as they run to ounces on the waters where the use of hair originated; still less wisely when he attaches it to the modern big heavy line; and the crown of his folly is his persistence in it after his adoption of the dry-fly method, which first introduced him to our notice.

With a sense of strict impartiality, which I trust has not been lost upon the reader, I turn the search-light next upon the bigotry which entirely taboos the cast of hair. An excellent use of hair in fishing for small fishing for small trout has been mentioned. There are others,-for example, in flyfishing for dace, and in bottom lines, as in roach-fishing. From all these the bigots of gut debar themselves. Gut, and gut only, say they; and of course there are more of them who say it now that drawn gut has been introduced. Drawn gut is silkworm gut, the diameter of which has been decreased by a special process of drawing through steel plates, and a nice lot of poor stuff the process sometimes puts upon the market! Now вее whither bigotry leads some people. They are wedded to the finest-drawn gut, at least on two or three lengths of their cast. In ninetynine cases out of a hundred that they cast over a fish they do not require this gut of cob

fold an angler, the expertest, put a rod into his hand, and (forbidding him to apply the test of feel to the shape, hexagonal or round) ask him to judge of the rod by the casting power of it, and nine times out of ten he will be wrong in his guess as to the material used in its build. The clever angler, if he is driven into a corner, can do wonders with an indifferent rod; and, on the other hand, the finest product of the manufacturer's skill avails little in the hands of a duffer. It is beyond human ingenuity to make a rod that will make an angler. The rod is the test of the angler, and equally the angler is the test of the rod. What is best for one is not necessarily best for another. Hear then this counsel, O novice! If you would be fitted with a rod, place yourself in a good manufacturer's hands, put his advice to the test for yourself at the river-side, judge sagaciously between your own experience and the opinion of any expert who offers one, and turn a deaf ear to all second-hand bigots, Finally, having made an excellent choice beware of becoming a bigot of that choice in turn. A counsel of perfection, no doubt; for which of us is free from original sin?

Pass now to the angler's line. Here, wonderful to say, there is unanimity as to material. Now that excellent lines of pure silk can be bought at a low price, the only reason for preferring the old silk-andhair has been removed; while for some inexplicable reason the faddists have fought more

shy of plaited wire than generally they do of suchlike innovations. No; the cause in which the line bigots are found actively taking sides is that of Taper-line v. Level-line, and a complicate cause it is. The level-line explains itself. The taper-line, I may say for the benefit of any reader, not a fisher, who has honoured us with his company so far, may be either a line with a single taper or a line with a double taper. There are thus three great communions of line bigots; but since a taper, where used, varies in grade with every style of sport and may vary in position in any one style, there are as many bodies of dissent from the taper communions as there are sixteenths of an inch of line about which to disagree. The argument for the single taper is that the line ought to be a true extension of the rod, and theoretically it is unanswerable. the other hand, the double taper gives increased power in casting. For long casting, especially on heavy, sluggish streams, where you have to get well over the fish, the double taper is often invaluable. I have found it so, but I have found also that with the double taper there is a double drag on the cast and a pull which prevent the correct extension and fall which the level line gives. Perfection of close plaiting of the silk line has supplied in great measure the weight and power found in the taper, without causing that imperfection in alighting to which I refer. I am a levelliner, therefore, but none of

On

your bigoted kind, for were I to go down to the Darenth tomorrow it would be with a double taper-line in my equipment. Once more, it is a question of conditions. Only, I find it difficult to conceive the conditions that would justify the far from uncommon practice of using the essentially dry-fly (that is, tapered) line with the essentially wet-fly (that is, more lissom) rod.

The taper-cast, like the taperline, is essentially dry-fly equipment, but sometimes a cast of hair is substituted for it; and this introduces to us a pretty variety, known as the Hairy Bigot, which is found in greatest numbers in Yorkshire. It feeds almost entirely on hairs from the tails of young stallions, and the rarity of its occurrence among us is due to the increasing difficulty it has in finding that form of sustenance. My own belief is that the hairy bigot is a survival of the first flight of that graceful and charming species, the FlyFishers. Let me explain more particularly. The earliest anglers to make a reputation by the use of the fly (if I am right) were satisfied with comparatively small fish, and when they found the trout becoming educated they very wisely and successfully tried for them with a hair cast. The fame of it spread through the country-side and beyond it; anglers everywhere took to using hair, and on mountain burns and on streams like those in the west of England, where the fish run small (mainly because the anglers there do not let them

grow big), in fact anywhere for half-pounders, the angler to-day will do very wisely in following that example. The hair-bigot, of course, does anything but wisely in using it in rivers where the fish run to as many pounds as they run to ounces on the waters where the use of hair originated; still less wisely when he attaches it to the modern big heavy line; and the crown of his folly is his persistence in it after his adoption of the dry-fly method, which first introduced him to our notice.

With a sense of strict impartiality, which I trust has not been lost upon the reader, I turn the search-light next upon the bigotry which entirely taboos the cast of hair. An excellent use of hair in fishing for small trout has been mentioned. There are others, -for example, in flyfishing for dace, and in bottom lines, as in roach-fishing. From all these the bigots of gut debar themselves. Gut, and gut only, say they; and of course there are more of them who say it now that drawn gut has been introduced. Drawn gut is silkworm gut, the diameter of which has been decreased by a special process of drawing through steel plates, and a nice lot of poor stuff the process sometimes puts upon the market! Now see whither bigotry leads some people. They are wedded to the finest-drawn gut, at least on two or three lengths of their cast. In ninetynine cases out of a hundred that they cast over a fish they do not require this gut of cob

web fineness; but have it they must. And so you see on the Itchen anglers with every expectation of getting into a threeor four-pounder using gut that originally was intended only to rival hair in the single strand over the smaller fish. This recalls an experience of my own, when I went out trout-fishing with a dace hair cast in front of a gut cast. I raised big fish, but I did not dare to strike. That, surely, was carrying sportsmanlike methods to absurd extremes; and so, it seems to me, they carry them who in their zeal for the gossamer gut handicap themselves against the fish until they are almost entirely out of the running.

We are fairly in sight now of the happiest hunting-ground of the angling bigot, and creels and baskets and bags, landingnets and winches, and hooks with a hundred kinds of eyes and as many kinds of bends, each with its champions, must keep our feet out of it no longer. These, like the angler's dress and rod and line and cast, are designed for his greater comfort and good practice in his sport. They do not greatly concern the fish. It is the subsequent proceedings that interest him more. He is, after all, the chief party in the game of deception which the angler proposes to play. If he detect the little devil masquerading in the garb of a fairy fly, if he smell the poison in the mouthful of jam, -well then, the game doesn't come off. With the lure, a new act begins, and a fresh character appears upon the scene, or at

least makes his presence in the background felt and indispensable. Unless the whole theory of angling is wrong from the beginning, success lies in persuading the fish that the lure is natural food, and the greatest success lies in deceiving the fish with an artificial reproduction of that particular tidbit of natural food which it fancies most at the moment. In short, angling practice is based upon knowledge of the tastes, likings, whims, temper of the fish, and of the appearances of the various creatures, alive and kicking or drowned and limp, upon which the fish feed,-about all which, as a matter of fact, the angler is little better informed than any of us is about the real mind of our Japanese allies. This mystery of fish life has the advantage that it gives value to every honest record angling experience; but it must be confessed that it also covers a multitude of follies.

Him we will

We have reached now the Dry-fly v. Wet-fly controversy. In staking out the claims of the dry-fly, I strive to be impartial, and to imagine us happy in a witness on that side who is not bigoted beyond all reasoning. require to justify his method and to explain his position. "As the sport of fly-fishing progressed in the south of England," I imagine him to answer, "the number of anglers increased, and their opportunities decreased. They had educated the trout to so high a pitch that save in the Mayfly season it was almost a rare