Excerpt from Angler's Desideratum: Containing the Best and Fullest Directions for Dressing the Artificial Fly; With Some New and Valuable Inventions Never angle with a small rod, even in streamlets; you cannot drop the fly in with that precision and delicacy at a distance, a long one enables you to do. It ought never to be less than twelve or sixteen feet, not bending at the top, when held horizontally; but, on the contrary, standing out gracefully from the root to thetip, tremblingly alive to the slightest motion of the hand vibrating and felt by it at every throw 'it ought not to be supple in the middle, nor stiff at the root, as most of the rods are that are hollow for reserved tops. The best wood to make them of is hickory, that from some parts of the West Indies is supposed to have the greatest elasticity; but all of this wood, if properly made, are good. Lance wood tops some prefer, but from experience I have found them not so serviceable as hickory, as they often break, apparently from the short grain of the. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.