tackle altogether too cumbersome.
They seldom use a longer salmon-rod than 15 feet, and frequently kill
the heavy trout of their lakes and rivers with delicate weapons of 8
and 9 feet.

In Scotland and Ireland, where the best of our salmon fishing is, you
may still meet with anglers who will have no rod under 18 or 20 feet.
Only big strong men accustomed to it can wield an implement of this
calibre through a hard day's casting without extreme fatigue. They
have a sound justification for their choice on such streams as Tweed,
Dee, and Spey, where the pools are of the major size and the getting
out of a long line is a necessity. They are not on such sure ground
when they urge that a heavy salmon can only be landed by a rod of
maximum dimensions. I saw a friend last autumn produce a 15-foot
greenheart rod on Tweedside. The gillies shook their heads
incredulously at the innovation, but honestly unlearned what they had
always believed to be infallible dogma when he killed his twenty-three
pound fish as quickly and safely as if the cause had been the 18-foot
rod which they had implored him to substitute for his most unorthodox
concern. It is true that there are "catches" which can only be covered
by long rods, with their undoubted advantages in sending out the fly,
picking the line off the water, and settling a fish with the promptest
dispatch.

The young salmon-fisher should learn to handle a rod that is sufficient
for his height and strength and no more. For ordinary purposes 17 feet
of greenheart or split-cane are ample, and the modern salmon angler has
come to look upon even this--which our forefathers would have
pooh-poohed as a mere grilse-rod--as excessive. The secret of
comfortable and successful angling, as an exercise no less than as a
sport, is in the choice of a rod. Some men seem to be unable to make
the right selection; they seem to lack the correct sense of touch and
balance. Others suffer from love of change; disloyal to the old friend
which fitted their hand to a nicety, they discard it for the passing
attractions of some newly-advertised pattern.

It is distressing to watch the efforts of the right man with the wrong
rod, or vice versa. With man and rod in harmony the latter does the
real work; unfitted to each other, the power of man and rod is alike at
its worst. Unfortunately this matter is one upon which the angler must
be his own teacher; but the angler's troubles, in the majority of
inst