Notes and Sport of a Dry -Fly Purist. 99 



but the river was too low for any chance of sport, 

 and my rod was idle. Therefore I pleasantly 

 whiled a way the time by visits to the birth- 

 place of Eobert Burns about two miles from Ayr, 

 to scenes in the neighbourhood he has described, 

 and by a daily reading of his poems. But as all 

 this was not fly fishing I decided to try Dcjvedale 

 for the first time, and lodge with J. Fosbrooke, 

 keeper to Sir John Ore we at Hartington. On July 

 28th, on the Manifold near Ham Hall, I killed three 

 and a half brace of trout. On the 29th and 30th, 

 on the Dove between Pike Pool and Walton and 

 Cotton's fishing house, piscatoribus sacrum, only four 

 brace. But on the next day I was destined to have 

 the best dry-fly sport I have ever had in my long 

 life, namely, eight brace, all caught on one pattern 

 of fly ; a small four-winged black gnat, and no other, 

 was tried. Fourteen of them weighed l^lb. to l^lb. 

 each, one If lb., and the largest 2^1b. At Fosbrooke's 

 house they were carefully weighed and laid out on 

 a large old-fashioned Japan tea-tray, for distribution 

 as he thought proper (for I had no friends near 

 enough to send them to), and he remarked that he 

 had never seen a better day's capture with a small fly 

 on this historic reach of the Dove. He had often in 

 the same locality attended the late F F , of fame 

 as angler and author, and he told me many amusing 

 tales about fly fishers who regularly came to the Dove. 



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