62 t>AYS IN DOVE 



consoling myself with the Ettrick Shepherd's 

 remark that : 



" Sometimes a body may keep threshing the 

 water for a week without seein 7 a snout and 

 sometimes a body hyucks a fish at the first 

 thrau ! " 



Talking about " hooking " fish suggests to 

 me a reason why " The Dove " trout are so 

 markedly shy. "A burnt child dreads the 

 fire." Every sportsman one encounters says 

 he has caught none, but "hooked" a lot. 

 Now, as this sort of thing is going on day 

 after day, and week after week, I should think 

 there can hardly be an adult trout in " The 

 Dove " that has not some time or other been 

 " hooked," and it can only be when his previous 

 hooking has been so long ago that his piscine 

 memory has forgotten it that he again permits 

 himself to be deluded, and for the last time, 

 by some such "artful dodger" as our major. 1 



1 On this point I note that learned piscators are not 

 agreed. Sir Humphry Davy says: " If a pricked trout 

 is chased into another pool, he will, I believe, soon again 

 take the artificial fly " ; whilst Dr. W. C. . Prime, an 

 American authority, says: "It is generally true that if 

 a trout be pricked by a fly hook he will not rise to it 

 again." 



