ASSORTED RISES 63 



in eddies after a weed-cutting; and these may be nymphs 

 of duns or gnats. In these circumstances nymphs seem 

 to be taken with a quiet deliberation very different from 

 the swashing eagerness with which the bulger swirls to 

 meet his under-water prey. Very often, however, in 

 streams the trout will be nymphing for hours together with 

 just the same quiet deliberation and with just as little 

 excitement as when taking floating duns; and, as on these 

 occasions there is no head-and-tail rise, the angler is usually 

 immensely puzzled to make out on what they are feeding. 

 The writer does not profess to have worked out any reason 

 why nymphs should be taken on one occasion with the 

 head-and-tail rise and on another with an action apparently 

 differing in no appreciable respect from the ordinary rise 

 to floating duns. The nearest thing to a clue he has been 

 able to observe is that while spent spinners are taken with 

 the head-and-tail rise, floating upwinged spinners are 

 absorbed, especially if small, with a soft suck which spreads 

 a ring so thin and creating so little disturbance as to be 

 scarcely visible in the dusk or the moonlight, while within 

 its circle the water looks like a little pool of fine creaming 

 lines whorling towards a pinhead hole in its centre. Again, 

 occasionally on a windy day one sees a head-and-tail rise 

 in quite rough water. The inclination therefore is to 

 suspect that the trout is taking an insect blown over or 

 caught by the waves with just the action with which he 

 takes a spent spinner or a drowned dun in the eddies, 

 and to deduce that the head-and-tail rise is to a quarry at 

 the surface with no chance of escape, and to make the 

 further deduction that, when nymphs are being taken thus, 

 they are in some stage or condition where they have no 

 chance of escape, and that where they are taken with what 

 looks like an ordinary rise they are capable of some, but 

 not a great, degree of activity, and may be below the film 



