Gay's notion of scientific fishing might have been thus summed: Know just where to fish and use the lightest rod made. Her own trout-rod weighed two and a half ounces without the reel. Compared to it, Pritchard's was a coarse and heavy instrument. His weighed six ounces.
"You could land a salmon with that," said Gay scornfully.
"I have," said Pritchard. "It's a splendid rod. I doubt if you could break it."
"Doesn't give the fish much of a run for his money."
"But how about this, Miss Gay?"
He showed her a leader of finest water-blue catgut. It was nine feet long and tapered from the thickness of a human hair to that of a thread of spider-spinning. Gay's waning admiration glowed once more.
"That wouldn't hold a minnow," she said.
"We must see about that," he answered; "we must hope that it will hold a very large char."
He reeled off eighty or ninety feet of line, and began to grease it with a white tallow.