THE FARNDALE. 161 



some of the best pools, and made them impossible to the average 

 fisherman ; then he would reverse the process until his line hung free 

 and drop his grub or minnow quietly into the desired spot. If he got 

 hold of a good fish he landed it somehow. 



On this rod so rigged out he caught the five-pounder mentioned 

 above, a veritable giant for the Dove. He hooked him at the waterfall 

 below his house, and being unable to give him line, he threw in the 

 long rod which the fish towed down stream, there being a ' fresh ' on 

 at the time, to another hole about 200 yards lower down. Old Duck 

 followed up his rod, recovered it, and played out and landed the fish, 

 which was by that time half-done. It was sent off at once to my father 

 at Aldby Park, and as in those days there was no railway, I suppose 

 it was taken on horseback. Many of the best spots on these streams 

 are to this day so overgrown as to be unfishable by ordinary methods, 

 but in this way and on that old long rod with grub or sink or draw 

 minnow, or daping with natural fly, old Duck got many a basket of 

 good fish. He had a device of his own, which I never saw in any tackle 

 shop or described in any book, for fishing the wasp and dock grub ; 

 it was a leaded and hackled hook, and perhaps his manufacture of these 

 gave rise to the lines you published about his making his own flies, 

 for they were something like an artificial fly. Perhaps he did make 

 some flies also, but well as I knew him, I have no recollection of seeing 

 any of them. 



I never saw him smoke, but he always chewed tobacco from my 

 earliest knowledge of him — say in 1855, and when he was fishing 

 with me he always had a quid in his cheek all day long. After I took 

 to smoking myself, I remember well asking him, as he took a bit of 

 my tobacco to chew, why he did not smoke it, and he told me that he 

 had smoked a good deal when he was younger, but thought it a bad 

 habit and so he took to chewing instead. 



His age is uncertain. From what he told me when he was about 70 

 and his memory still fresh, I gathered that he was more than 100 years 

 old when he died, probably about 102. All he could tell me of his birth 

 was that he was born and baptised in London, his father being a Farndale 

 man. I searched the registers of several of the most likely London 

 Churches, but could not find his name. As he grew old, his relations 

 were desirous of having a photograph of him, but he persistently 

 refused to be ' took.' However, I thought I could persuade him, and 

 one day in the autumn of 1884, I got hold of a photographer who was 

 doing some work for my sister at Lastingham, drove him up the dale 

 and caught Duck in his ordinary costume such as he had ever worn on 

 our fishing expeditions ; drab breeches with brass buttons, blueish-grey 

 stockings, red neckerchief, etc. I drove up to the garden gate and said, 

 * Come, Duck, get the old ' broomstick ' and your basket and come 

 out into the garden.' So he did, and I persuaded him to let the man 



L 



