The Sportswoman's Library, Vol. 2 of 2

by Unknown

The cast itself requires careful examination before it is used; it should be stained to the required colour and tested with a steelyard up to sixteen or seventeen pounds for finer tackle, and eighteen for that which is coarser. Trout-casts, will not, of course, require or bear so severe a strain, but should be tried to see whether there is any defect either in the gut or in the knots which unite the several lengths of which they consist.

Few women, I imagine, will care to make their own casts, although some do, and for those I may mention that the best and cheapest gut is to be had in the South of Spain, where it is about one-third of the price which it fetches in England. Fly-making is very pretty work for delicate fingers but tedious and, on the whole, not very remunerative, as flies can be bought very cheap now-a-days. They may not be quite so carefully finished as those of home manufacture, but they are, I must admit, equally killing, although for years I placed implicit faith in the latter.

There was one fly for which I had a special fancy; it is a combination of orange-coloured silks and tinsel for the body with pheasant and jay for the wings, peacock for the head and golden pheasant for the tail. On one occasion, this "Orange Body" of private manufacture was presented to a friend, who admired it greatly and sallied forth, on slaughter bent.

He hooked a salmon almost with the first cast, struck with decision, and behold, all the dressing of the hook including of course the eye, came away and he lost his fish.

What had happened? The secret was this: that the cobbler's wax used for fly-making had been mislaid, and an ordinary piece of wax-candle used instead, the result being that the fish went away with the hook in his mouth while the rest of the fly remained to adorn the cast.

Test your flies, therefore, see that they are thoroughly sound and that the eye and piece of gut by which they are fastened to the cast are not frayed. It is a good thing to try a new fly in a basin of water or shallow pond to see whether it floats, as it should, horizontally, and whether the wings have a life-like motion, as by repeated short movements you play it with your hand.

Attention to all these little matters may seem very irksome at first, but it is by these means that one angler will succeed when another who precedes him on the same ground, will obtain no sport.

To give an accurate description of the different kinds of flies used in salmon and trout fishing, would be quite impossible in so short an article as the present one, but it should be said that, as a general rule, the deeper and larger the river the larger and brighter will be the flies required.

In thick or heavy water, after a flood, large bright coloured flies are indicated, and the clearer the stream the smaller must be the size, and the more neutral the colours tend to become. Most authorities seem to agree that the size of flies is a much more important factor in their killing qualities than the special materials of which they are made, or the finish and delicacy of their manufacture. When fish do not seem to be rising it is well to try them with another colour or make, and this will often enable the angler to fill his basket, when otherwise the day's sport must have been marked with a "duck's egg."

The same general rules also apply to trout fishing, but it should be remembered that in the latter case, except when fishing in lakes or rivers for the larger species which may fairly be angled for as salmon, the shallow water, enabling the lure to be plainly seen, requires less gaudy colours, and, of course, an immense reduction in size.