LINE & TRIGGER.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIII, Issue 773, 29 December 1904, Page 13

LINE & TRIGGER.

A prominent English angler has taken the records of the recent Crvstal Palace casting tournament and worked out three classifications as follows : by competi’ors, by weight and by distance cast. These give the names of the competitors, the weight and length of the rod, the distance < ast and its number of times the length of the rod; in other words, one c r mpedtor who used a 4|.oun e fly-rod 9 feet in length, cast 72 feet, or 8 times the length of his rod. while another o e, using a rod 18 feet long and weighing 42 ounces, cast a salmon fly 87 feet or 4 5-6th times the length of his rod. “The deduction I draw,” said this gen’leman, “put concisely,! are, that the average man cannot get out of any fly-rod a cast of 10 times its length, and as his rod gets longer and heavier unless he be a very stronsr man indeed, the number of times his rod length that he can cast declines rapidly, and the li h er his rod for its length the slower the decline takes place.”

The wild dog of Central Africa, an explorer writes, is common enough. He is an ugly looking beast, with a pied body, coarse hair, short head and large upright ears. These wild dogs play fearful havoc with game, occasionally clearing out whole districts precisely in the same manner as the red dhole of India, before which even the tiger is said to retreat. They have a wonderful power of scent, wonderful boldness, e durance, and pertinacity, and their loose easy gallop covers the groundjfar more quickly than it appears to do They usually hunt in considerable p .cks, although they are sometimes met in threes and fours. We have never heard of wild dogs actually attacking a man, but they often behave as if on the point of doing so. and unarmed tnyellers have been literally treed by th. m before now.