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 III CARE OF THE RODS WHEN you come to the fishing rods, it is a good plan to take them all out of the tackle cabinet or place where they are kept, joint them up and examine them in a superficial way to see if any ferrules are loose, and if there are any kinks in tops that may be straightened out before the angling season comes around. Too often anglers get into the habit of standing rod-joints in a corner in a closet. If they are protected by wood forms, leather cases, aluminum or bamboo tubes, there is little danger that tips and joints will go crooked, but if left in cloth cases, tied with tapes, they may need straightening. It is handy to keep a rod in a cloth case, but often one tape is tied more securely than others, and the swell of the hand-grasp will help to curve the tips if the rod is left in a dry place for several weeks. The beauty of a fine trout rod may be marred in a short time merely by leaning the joints against a wall. A better plan is to suspend all the parts from brass brads driven in the walls of the tackle cabinet. The top-rings of the tips will fit these brads, as also the top guides of the joints. Better still, suspend the jointed rod from a hook placed in the ceiling of a cool closet. This applies to split bamboo as well as wood rods, for while the latter are more easily put out of shape during the frequent changes in temperature in winter, split bamboo may also lose its shape in time under the conditions named, particularly the slender tips and middle joints. If a wood rod becomes hopelessly set through long use and heavy strain, suspend it from a brad driven into the picture moulding in a .cool room, where it will not touch anything, and leave a heavy reel on it, the latter, of course, covered with its chamois bag to keep out dust. Af...