Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II LEARNING TO CAST BAIT casting as practiced by an expert is an art combining remarkable accuracy, delicacy of thumbing, and at times great distances. To attain anything like perfection in bait casting requires years of experience and constant practice. Of course, the ability to drop one's lure within a few inches of a lily pad or rock is an advantage not to be unieresti- mated; other things being equal, the most fish usually are on the string of the best caster. Happily, however, it is not necessary to be a tournament caster for practical fish catching purposes. Good enough casting to catch fish under average conditions can be learned in a very short time, although it is hard to convince those who have tried it only once or twice that this is so. True, surprising things happen the first time one attempts to cast, but not more so than what happens to the beginner in skating or bicycle riding. A few years ago, a friend was to accompany us on our vacation, and as he was not a caster we impressed upon him the advisability of learning the art. He was THE OVERHEAD CAST Whip the rod smartly and easily forward, slightly releasing the pressure of the thumb on the reel as the rod passes the perpendicular. This movement is executed with the forearm and wrist only. THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY ASTOR, LENOX TILDEN EOUNDATIiIN- somewhat skeptical, but the week before we were scheduled to leave town, he came to our home and we had a "session" out in the alley. In two hours he was casting fairly well at sixty and seventy feet, and with a few more hours' practice, in the evenings of the following week, he became quite proficient—proficient enough to make the writer exert himelf to keep a fish or two ahead of him during the next two weeks. Of course, he is one of...