SUNDRY OBSERVATIONS 155 



somehow its head and thorax seemed to threaten to emerge. 

 Then the bursting of the brown skin of the thorax, the six 

 pale greenish legs gripping the surface, while the body 

 curled tail downwards in the water, as if to let the current 

 get a purchase on the sheath. Then simultaneously the 

 wings shooting up, the sheath coming away and floating 

 far down the current, and the fairy-like creature standing 

 with wings erect and upturned tail to drift down-stream, 

 it may be a few yards or only a few inches, before taking 

 flight for the meadows. These few inches or yards 

 represent the one opportunity the trout, dace, or chub has 

 of taking the May fly in the winged stage before, as spent 

 imago, the fly goes drifting down the stream, with wings 

 flat on the water, dead or in the throes of dissolution. 

 The chances, therefore, for the fish of taking the insect 

 in the nymphal stage are obviously much greater, and it 

 is little to be wondered at that, in the inert semi-submerged 

 nymph just about to hatch and in the spent, water-logged, 

 dying or dead spinner, the trout finds a far easier prey 

 than it does in the fidgety, fluttering, newly-hatched 

 May-fly which is so apt to disappoint him by taking wing 

 at the moment he puts up. 



If these deductions be sound in the case of the green drake 

 and its spinners, they are probably equally sound in the 

 cases of all the other and far smaller upwinged flies, which, 

 in process of hatching, oviposition, and death follow the 

 same sequence of stages as the May fly. And this probably 

 is one good reason for the success of nymph-like, or spinner- 

 like, flies such as Tup's Indispensable, fished semi-sub- 

 merged. Dubbed with a body material which readily takes 

 up the water and fills with light, and busked with a hackle 

 which is enough to enable the fly to cling to the surface 

 film, such a pattern may well be taken, at one stage of the 

 fly's career, for the hatching nymph getting its head above 



