It would be rather a fine conjuring trick to play when people are not up to it—to take an ordinary watering-pot and apparently pour ordinary water on the grass, and then play a mouth-organ or whistle a tune to call up the worms. Someone else will be sure to try it, too, and if you have taken care to empty your can of mustard and water they will put in plain water and will get no result in the shape of worms.
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FLY-FISHING.
Then there is a third kind of fishing, and that is fly-fishing. It is the most difficult, but at the same time the most useful, because it is the only way that will do in the rapid rivers and streams with which you meet in the wilds; and also it can be used on lakes and slower rivers, and it is much the best fun.
All the boys in Norway catch their fish by fly-fishing. You have to have a whippy rod with a long line to it, and a long piece of gut (called the "cast") on it, with from one to three hooks made to look like flies on it, these are fixed at about two feet apart.
By using the rod as a spring you can throw the line a long distance to any point you wish, so that the flies will float past the nose of a fish and tempt him to rush out and swallow one.
The throwing of the fly—casting it is called—is at first the difficulty for a beginner, but it comes all right with a little practice. You can learn to do it perfectly well without going to a river and without having any hooks on your line to begin with.
Take a rod, and a line as long as a rod and a half, and try throwing it in a field or road or anywhere—till you can get the line to go out perfectly straight to its full extent on to the ground at the spot you wish. The great points to remember which are the key to success arc these: All the work is done by the tip of the rod, not the butt. Bring your rod back with a little jerk at the end to throw the line back behind you, but don't let the rod itself go back much beyond the upright position.
[Illustration: LEARNING TO THROW THE FLY.]
Before throwing the line forward again, give a pause so that it has time to straighten itself behind you—and that pause is the secret of the whole thing. It must not be too short, or your line will still be curled up when you shoot it forward and will not go out the distance you want, and if the pause is too long it will fall and catch on the ground behind you, and also will lose its spring. That is where practice is so necessary, so that you know exactly how long to pause.