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Young Knights of the Empire

49 of 87

When I was out with George, I had to make myself a rod, as we only had one rod between us and I got tired of waiting for my turn with it; but we were high up in the mountains where the woods were thin, so I only got a poor choice of sticks from which to make one. However, I cut down a likely looking birch sapling and trimmed him down, and he did pretty well; but he was not very springy, so it required more brute force on my part than skilful turning of the wrist to get my line out, But I caught a lot of fish with him all the same. * * * * * REPAIRING A ROD. One day I broke the delicate top joint of my fly-fishing rod by catching the fly in a bush during the back throw. Well, it's no use giving up fishing because your rod is broken; the thing to do is to set to work and mend it. It is an accident which often happens, especially to a beginner, and every Scout ought to know how to mend his rod. My rod had snapped off a few inches from the tip, so I took the ring off the broken tip, and, after trimming the broken end of the rod with my knife, I put the ring on to this and thus made my rod workable; but it was just a few inches shorter than it had been before. This is the way to bind your ring on to the new tip--at least, it's the way I did it, and it served quite well for the rest of my trip. Having no beeswax, I took some "gum" from the bark of a fir tree and rubbed a thin coating on the rod and on the black silk thread I had with me; then, putting the ring on to the end of the rod, I bound it there with a very careful and tight wrapping of the silk. This I had previously wound on to a stick so as to get a good hold on it for pulling each turn tight. To fasten the end of the silk, proceed as follows: [Illustration: HOW TO BIND THE RING OF A FISHING-ROD ON A NEW TIP.] After winding from A steadily up towards the point B (about an inch), when you have still about half a dozen turns to do, make a big loop of your silk C, and lay the loose end of it, B D, on the unbound bit of rod, and go on binding over it until you have reached the point B with your thread as in the sketch. You then pull D and the loop C gradually closes in till there is nothing left of it. Then you cut off the loose end D close to the rod. Put a coating of gum or varnish over the whole to make it fast and watertight, and then you have your rod as strong and as sound as ever. * * * * * FISHERMEN'S KNOTS. In order to be able to fix your hook on to your line and to join up the different bits of line, you want to know how to tie your knots; but in addition to those which you have learnt as a Scout there are several more which come in useful for a fisherman. I will only give you one or two here, but there are many others. These are drawn half tied, just before pulling tight. Here is the overhand loop: [Illustration: KNOT] To join a line to a loop do it this way: [Illustration: KNOT] Much the same kind of knot is used to tie a hook to a line: [Illustration: KNOT] To join two lengths of line together, even when of different thickness, follow out this method: [Illustration: KNOT] * * * * * KILLING FISH. The Scout Law says that you should not kill God's creatures without good reason. It is allowable when you need them for food. In the case of fishing you often catch them when practising, but you need not kill every fish you catch; you can take them carefully off the hook and put them back into the water. The hook as a rule catches them in the lip, which with them is not the tender flesh that it is with us, but merely a lot of bones held together by gristle, so they do not suffer pain as we should--and this is shown by the way the same fish will come on again after having been already caught. When you want to keep a fish that you have caught, you should kill him at once and put him out of his misery, and this you can do either by hitting him on the head with a stick, or by driving your knife into his brain, or by putting your finger down his throat and then bending his head backwards and breaking his neck. * * * * * CLEANING

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