Always carry with you a piece of India rubber. Draw the tail line through it before you use the line, in order to straighten it and prove its strength; and if there are any faults in it, the India rubber will find them out, which is far better than making the discovery by losing a good fish from the too easy breaking of your untried tail line.
Gut is apt to snap if very dry, and I recommend immersing it in water for ten or fifteen minutes before using it. The best method of preserving gut that I know of is to keep it in parchment, slightly steeped in best salad oil.
Always carry with you some strong silk and strong thread, and a piece of shoemaker’s wax.
CHAPTER V.
TO MAKE A TAIL LINE.
In joining pieces of gut together to make a tail line, I think the following joining knot, called the “sheet bend,” is the best, as the knot is the smallest and neatest that can be made, and the more the line is stretched, the tighter the knot becomes.
Make a loop with the left-hand end of the gut to be joined, (a b figure below), and hold it between the finger and thumb of the left hand. Then pass the end of the right hand gut to be joined through the loop and under it; then round and under the two legs of the loop; then over the b leg of the loop; then under itself and out over the a leg of the loop, as shown in the figure below. (See another mode of joining pieces of gut for tail lines in the observations on bob-flies, page [20].)
