An Olive Dun.
Make a strong infusion of the outside brown leaves or coating of onions, by allowing the ingredients to stand warm by the fire for ten or twelve hours.
When quite cold put the gut into it, and let it remain until the hue becomes as dark as may be required.
All the above dyes for gut are to be used cold.
ARTIFICIAL BAIT AND FLY-FISHING.
In fly-fishing, a rod, and a good rod, is one of the prime requisites, upon the excellence of which depends, in a great measure, the successful exercise of the angler’s skill. An excellent rod may be made of different materials and in different manners, a choice among which will depend upon fancied, more than real superiority; but each writer has his favorites, and, if able, is entitled to give the reasons for his preference.
Fly-fishing is mainly confined to salmon and trout-fishing; for these, essentially different implements are required; for the long casts and heavy play of the former, amid the rapids and cascades of the foaming river, a stout, stiff, two-handed rod is requisite; while for the feebler efforts and shorter casts of the latter, amid the ripples of the murmuring brook, or upon the placid surface of the quiet pond, a light, single-handed rod is preferable.
The salmon-rod should be as long and strong as the muscles of the angler will enable him to wield trenchantly all day through, and should have that quick, powerful pliancy that will send the fly with or across the wind a prodigious distance. It is ordinarily made of ash or hickory for the joints, and bamboo, on account of its lightness, for the tip. Greenheart has lately become the favorite wood, being now almost universally employed in England, and offers, certainly, some desirable advantages; but I have not had sufficient experience with it to speak decisively of its merits. A salmon-rod should be twenty feet long; after giving the matter due deliberation, and trying to reduce every ounce of weight, I have resolved that I cannot take off an inch from twenty feet. To meet the objection that a weak, small man must, under these circumstances, either give up the fishing or the rod, I would suggest that he inure himself to the labor by practising, for his first few days upon the river, with a sixteen-foot rod till his muscles are strengthened, and then substituting one of full length and weight.