56 FISH AND FISHING IN SCOTLAND. 



CHAPTEE VI. 



THE ATE; THE DOONE; LOCH DOONE ; THE LOCH OF KEN; 

 ST. MARY'S ISLE. 



"Before him Doone 

 Pours all his floods." BuKNS. 



THE angler who is desirous of fishing these waters should 

 proceed to Ayr, making that ancient town his head-quarters. I 

 travelled from Castle Gary in a gig, by a road we had not pre- 

 viously journeyed, our object being to see the river Ayr as near 

 its source as we well could. Our road lay, in fact, to Mauchline, 

 which, though famed 



" For honest men and bonnie lassies," 



is not a place for anglers. After a drive over a dreary and un- 

 interesting country, we reached the town in which the immortal 

 Burns passed some of the happiest days of his life ; but for his 

 memory, the place is not worth naming, nor looking at, and so 

 next morning a short walk brought us to the wooded banks of 

 the Ayr. Wild, rocky, and tangled with trees and bushes, the 

 river forms a succession of short streams and deep still pools, 

 which no winds can touch. It was a warm autumn morning, 

 and the still water resembled molten glass a polished mirror, 

 reflecting strongly and deeply each tree, and rock, and passing 

 cloud. I was not prepared for meeting so wild a scene; it 

 must have aided Burns 's inspiration, but he has nowhere alluded 

 to it. 



The difficulty of reaching the margin of the stream was con- 

 siderable ; the pools deep and dangerous ; it was all but im- 

 possible to angle. Lower down, however, 1 think we did take 

 a few small trout, but the Ayr at this point is clearly not a 

 trouting stream ; so we descended its banks until, reaching a 

 small roadside inn, close to Stair, ^e breakfasted luxuriously 

 on tea and kippered salmon, and, returning to Mauchline, pro- 

 ceeded at once by the banks of the Ayr to the town itself. It 



