This tying mayfly nymphs DVD shows you how to tie each of the following (7) seven mayfly nymph
patterns. These patterns (tied using various hook sizes and colors prescribed in our recipes on the CD)
will imitate species of mayfly nymph that trout feed on. Once you learn to tie these seven basic patterns,
you will never need to tie another mayfly nymph pattern. The flies shown below do not imitate any
particular species of mayflies. The colors of materials should match those in the recipes provided with the
DVD depending on the particular species of mayfly you desire to imitate.
Perfect Fly Mayfly Nymphs:
1. Perfect Swimmer Nymph:
Imitates small swimming nymphs like the
Little Blue-winged Olive group of
Plauditus, Timpanogo, Acentrella, and
Diphetor genera.
Blue-winged Olives like the baetis
species are will imitated with this slim,
profile nymph. This one can be tied in
hook sizes ranging from a 14 to a 22.
Most of them are a size 16 and smaller.
This one can be weighted to fish on or
near the bottom or as is in the surface
skim.
2. Perfect Super Swimmer Nymph:
Imitates larger swimming nymphs such as
the Slate Drakes, Gray Drakes,
Callibaetis, Brown Duns and others. This
one works best for those swimming
nymphs that are a hook size 14 and
larger. These larger swimming nymphs
are very good swimmers and behave a lot
like small minnows. They can dart
around near the bottom with sudden
bursts of speed. The fly can be fished
dead drift but is best when presented
with some action imparted either by
twitching the tip of the fly rod or by small
short twitches made by line hand.
3. Perfect Crawler Nymph:
Imitates a huge group of crawler mayflies
including the Sulphurs, Hendricksons,
Pale Evening Duns, Pale Morning Duns,
Flavs, smaller Western Green Drakes
(12, 14), Little Dark Hendrickson, Small
Western Dark Hendricksons, Chocolate
Duns, Blue Quills, Mahogany Duns,
Eastern Blue-winged Olives and Tricos.
It can be tied in sizes as large as a 12
hook size and down as small as a 22. In
the water, it moves to imitates the gills
and legs of the crawler nymphs very realistically.
4. Perfect Super Crawler Nymph:
Imitates the big crawler nymphs that are
a size 10 and larger like the Great Red
Quill and those Western Green Drakes
that are a hook size 10 and larger.
Although it doesn't imitate a large number
of species, it is important for those it does
imitate. Slightly weighted, it can be fished
from the bottom to just beneath the
surface skim where these crawlers shed
their nymphal shucks and emerge.
5. Perfect Burrower Nymph:
Imitates the big burrower nymphs which
are the large drakes including the Brown,
Yellow, Golden, Eastern Green, Great
Olive-Green Drake, Dark Green Drake,
Big Slate Drake, and White Fly. The
natural movement of the materials this fly is
made of imitates the swimming motions of
the burrower nymphs very well. Weighted
correctly for the particular depth of water
you are fishing, this fly can be presented
from the bottom to the surface in a very
realistic manner. It is not necessary to add
any additional action to the drift of the fly.
6. Perfect Clinger Nymph
Clinger nymphs are flatter than other types
and have longer tails that are spread out.
This fly imitates the large groups of clinger
nymphs such as the Western March
Browns, Eastern March Browns,
Light Cahills, Cream Cahills, Heptagenia
Group, Quill Gordons, Slate Duns,
Yellow Quills, Dark Red Quills,
Ginger Quills, & Little Yellow Quills. The
thorax is weighted to help keep it on the
bottom where the clingers live. The fly is
much flatter than it appears in this image.
7. Perfect Emerging Nymph:
Imitates those smaller nymphs that are
hanging in the surface film after the wing
case has split and the wings are unfolding.
For the most part, these are hook size 18
and smaller mayflies that have trouble
getting through the surface skim. This fly
is more nymph than dun and represents
the emerger when the wings are just
beginning to unfold. It will float in the
skim in a more upright position than shown
in this image.
Tying Perfect Mayfly Nymphs
New
We do not think that trout can count but we do think that the size, shape and form of a fly is a factor in
whether or not trout take your imitation for the real thing. Mayfly nymphs have six legs, not twenty or
thirty like many standard imitations. The legs extend out along the sides of the nymph. They do not have
several legs on each side extending out of the same spot.
Mayfly nymphs have three, or sometimes two, tails; not six or a dozen like many imitations. Although
gills are present in certain areas, the abdominal section of most mayfly nymphs is basically smooth and
segmented, not solid or fury.
whether or not trout take your imitation for the real thing. Mayfly nymphs have six legs, not twenty or
thirty like many standard imitations. The legs extend out along the sides of the nymph. They do not have
several legs on each side extending out of the same spot.
Mayfly nymphs have three, or sometimes two, tails; not six or a dozen like many imitations. Although
gills are present in certain areas, the abdominal section of most mayfly nymphs is basically smooth and
segmented, not solid or fury.
There are basically four types of mayfly nymphs-swimmers, burrowers, crawlers and clingers. Most
clinger mayfly nymphs look about as much alike a burrower mayfly nymph as an elk looks like an
antelope. The slim, streamlined swimming nymphs don't resemble the crawlers very much either.
Generally speaking, this fact alone requires at least four basic types of mayfly nymph patterns. Some of
the nymphs within the same category are quite different. While it is true that many mayfly nymph
species can be imitated well by just varying the size and color of the same pattern, others require
features with different shapes and forms.
Our nymph and emerging "Perfect Mayfly" imitations vary from our "Nb" nymph that is intended to be
fished from on or near the bottom to the surface; to the "En" or emerging nymph, which has unfolding
wings and the front part of its body partially out of the shuck.
clinger mayfly nymphs look about as much alike a burrower mayfly nymph as an elk looks like an
antelope. The slim, streamlined swimming nymphs don't resemble the crawlers very much either.
Generally speaking, this fact alone requires at least four basic types of mayfly nymph patterns. Some of
the nymphs within the same category are quite different. While it is true that many mayfly nymph
species can be imitated well by just varying the size and color of the same pattern, others require
features with different shapes and forms.
Our nymph and emerging "Perfect Mayfly" imitations vary from our "Nb" nymph that is intended to be
fished from on or near the bottom to the surface; to the "En" or emerging nymph, which has unfolding
wings and the front part of its body partially out of the shuck.
Patterns:
The mayfly patterns including in this program are selected to imitate the 43 (forty-three) categories of
mayflies that are included in our "Imitating Aquatic Insects - Mayflies" program. We attempted to keep the
number of different patterns and recipes as low as possible. The result was forty-three categories. These
categories closely represent over one hundred species taken from the genera of all the important families
of mayflies. In each of the 43 categories, there are usually 4(four) and may be as many as 6 (six) different
patterns specifically selected to cover the various stages of the mayfly species or species covered in that
category. We believe that there is enough difference in the naturals in each of the categories to justify
tying and fishing specific imitations that represent them. Keep in mind, this covers the entire United States
and you may only be concerned with the mayflies that are prevalent in the area you fish. You can further
eliminate the ones needed even more by obtaining the "Choosing the Right Fly" program for the area you
fish. This way, you may only want to be concerned with tying the flies you need for the streams you fish
within that area.
Remember, all the flies are cross referenced using an alphanumerical reference to the "Imitating Mayfly"
programs; the various programs in the "Understanding Trout" series; and the "Choosing the Right Fly".
The mayfly patterns including in this program are selected to imitate the 43 (forty-three) categories of
mayflies that are included in our "Imitating Aquatic Insects - Mayflies" program. We attempted to keep the
number of different patterns and recipes as low as possible. The result was forty-three categories. These
categories closely represent over one hundred species taken from the genera of all the important families
of mayflies. In each of the 43 categories, there are usually 4(four) and may be as many as 6 (six) different
patterns specifically selected to cover the various stages of the mayfly species or species covered in that
category. We believe that there is enough difference in the naturals in each of the categories to justify
tying and fishing specific imitations that represent them. Keep in mind, this covers the entire United States
and you may only be concerned with the mayflies that are prevalent in the area you fish. You can further
eliminate the ones needed even more by obtaining the "Choosing the Right Fly" program for the area you
fish. This way, you may only want to be concerned with tying the flies you need for the streams you fish
within that area.
Remember, all the flies are cross referenced using an alphanumerical reference to the "Imitating Mayfly"
programs; the various programs in the "Understanding Trout" series; and the "Choosing the Right Fly".
Our imitations must mimic the "behavior" of mayflies as well as their looks. Good imitations must look
and act natural, not so much from our overhead viewpoint, but much more so, from the trout's underwater
viewpoint. Not from the standpoint of our relatively good vision, but from the standpoint of the trout's
relatively poor vision.
Mayfly nymphs have six legs, not twenty or thirty like many standard imitations. The legs extend out
along the sides of the nymph. Mayflies do not have several legs on each side extending out of the same spot.
They have three, or sometimes two, tails; not six or a dozen like many imitations. We know mayflies
can't count, but several tails provides a shape, size and form unlike that of real mayfly tails. Although gills
are present in certain areas, the abdominal section of most mayfly nymphs is basically smooth and
segmented, not solid or fury. At some point of departure from a fly that looks like the real one to a fly that
remotely resembles a the real fly; depending on many factors such as the length of time the fish has to
examine the fly, the clarity of the water and many others; trout can tell the difference. If this were not
true, you may as well use dough balls for flies.
Our nymph and emerging "Perfect Mayfly" imitations vary from our "Nb" nymph that is intended to be
fished on or near the bottom; to the "En" or emerging nymph, which has unfolding wings and the front part
of its body partially out of the shuck; to an "Et" or emerging combination nymph and dun, with the shuck
still hanging or trailing on the "almost" emerged dun shown in our mayfly dun, emerger and spinner DVD..
Imitations can only represent the emerging insect at a specific stage of life at a specific time during this
short interval of time. Trout take advantage of the emerging mayflies during this transition time, eating them
with ease.
Some mayflies emerge on the bottom or somewhere in between the bottom and the surface, and swim to
the surface as duns. Our "Ea", emerging adult or wet fly imitation, represents those mayflies that emerge
below the surface.
As mentioned before, we do not think trout count the number of tails and legs on a fly, but we do think the
more closely the imitation matches the natural nymph, emerger, dun or spinner, the more effective the fly
will be.
Off hand, you may think that this is a tremendous number of flies. Actually it is not. Most of the "Perfect
Flies" are just variations of the same thing, differences in color and size of the main features such as length
of tails, size of the thorax, etc. There are only (seven) 7 basic patterns. Once you learn to tie these basic
mayfly nymphs, you can tie specific imitations of all of them.
The mayfly patterns including in this program are selected to imitate the 43 (forty-three) categories of
mayflies that are included in our "Imitating Aquatic Insects - Mayflies" program. We attempted to keep the
number of different patterns and recipes as low as possible. The result was forty-three categories. These
categories closely represent over one-hundred species taken from the genera of all the important families
of mayflies. In each of the 43 categories, there are usually 4 (four) and may be as many as 6 (six) different
patterns specifically selected to cover the various stages of the mayfly specie or species covered in that
category. We believe that there is enough difference in the naturals in each of the categories to justify
tying and fishing specific imitations that represent them. Keep in mind, this covers the entire United
States and you may only be concerned with the mayflies that are prevalent in the area you fish. You can
further eliminate the ones needed even more by obtaining the "Choosing the Right Fly" for the area you
fish. This way, you may only want to be concerned with tying the flies you need for the streams you fish
within that area.
Remember, all the flies are cross referenced using an alphanumerical reference to the "Imitating Mayfly"
programs; the various programs in the "Understanding Trout" series; and the "Choosing the Right Fly"
program.
If you carry flies representing all the patterns for all stages of all the mayflies in this program, you will be
able to imitate just about any species of mayfly encountered in the United States, and most
anywhere else for that matter. There are some species that are rarely encountered on trout streams or still
water, species that are marginal warm water mayflies and specie that appear extremely sparse in density
that we do not have specific imitative patterns for. If you encounter such a bug, then we feel certain that
one of the patterns you have will come close enough that you or the trout will never know the difference.
We suggest that you obtain our "Choosing the Right Fly" program for the area you fish and at least, attempt
to tie the mayfly patterns listed for the particular streams that you intend to fish. If you use the same
approach for our terrestrial, streamers, caddisfly, midge, stonefly, damsel and dragonfly programs and then
fail to catch fish, then you certainly shouldn't be able to blame it on not having the right fly.
Lets start with what we call the bottom nymph, although it actually can be fished anywhere from the
bottom to the surface skim. You will notice we do not include any bead head patterns, not that there is
really anything wrong with them, and we don't add weight to the nymphs themselves. Here is why.
Natural mayfly nymphs don't have heads that look much like beads, even small beads, much less the large
ones. The use of beads would tend to get away from our realistic approach. Bead heads are used to add
weight and sometimes, add flash that in the eyes of some anglers, attract the trout to the fly. If you use
beads for weight or if you want to add weight to the fly with lead wire wrappings or some other technique,
then you are going to need to tie a lot of flies. Different currents and different depths of water and the
combination of the two would require an infinitesimal number of weights. In other words, each and every
stream, or we should say location on a stream, might require a different amount of weight to get the fly
near or on the bottom. Although we use weight in a few patterns for an entirely different purpose, that is to
help make the configuration of some clinger and crawler nymphs flat, our nymphs should be presented
with added weight. In each specific case, anglers should continue to experiment by adding different
numbers and sizes of weights until the fly gets in the right position relative the bottom. This part of nymph
fishing is critical for success. This means getting hung occasionally and loosing some flies.
Keep in mind when tying nymphs that the nymph sizes given for the various species of mayflies are
representative of the final instar or the last stage of development prior to emerging. All nymphs exist for
much of the their life throughout the year in smaller sizes, so depending on when you are fishing, smaller
may be okay, but if you are using imitations that are larger than the naturals, you may have a problem.
You will notice most of our nymph patterns, and most of all the patterns for the other stages of the
mayflies' life utilize biots for the bodies, if not, some other form of segmented or ribbed pattern. That is
because the real mayflies, nymphs and other stages of life, have segmented bodies.
You can use synthetics tubing of various types and depending upon the particular brand you have may even
look somewhat realistic. Some of the tubing will work for specific sizes of flies, but so far, we have found
none that imitate the segmentation of all the various sizes of mayflies. A hook size 6 is one thing and a size
26 is quite another thing. Even when you stretch the material to make it smaller, using it may drastically
change the number of segments of the mayfly body. The trout may not be able to count but they may
recognize that a nymph with 4 segments or 44 segments doesn't look much like the real ones that usually
have ten.
We are partial to biots for many other reasons. One is that you can buy them pre-stripped and dyed in
several different colors or you can strip and die them yourself in any colors. Biots have two very different
sides. One side of the goose biot has a tiny row of barbules that looks a lot like gills on some species of
nymphs. The other side is smooth.
You can use different forms of added materials to enhance the segmentation and gills or a waterproof
making pen to add colors to the segments making them even more distinguishable. But the most important
feature is the natural finish of the biots.
A turkey biot that is over an inch long is a long one. They are usually less than an inch long and rarely over
an inch and a quarter long. Turkey biots are longer than goose biots and are usually needed for hook
size 14 and larger flies. A one inch long goose biot is a long one. Although turkey biots work for the small
flies too, the goose biots are better for flies size 16 and smaller because they are better proportioned for
them. They are usually narrower than turkey biots. They are transparent however, and do not offer the
same appearance as goose biots.
When you want the smooth segmentation it is best to slightly overlap the biot to help conceal the barbules.
The overlapping takes a slightly longer biot than if it were butted.
Other than just coming in different sizes and colors, as we previously said, mayfly nymphs come in several
different shapes depending upon the type of nymph they are - swimmer, clinger, crawler or the burrower.
Now in some cases there is not much difference, and in other there is quite a bit of difference, even within
the same classification. That is why we have more than one basic patterns and several variations of them
for the various genera of mayflies.
Just for example, if you will look at the isonychia nymph and the baetis nymph in comparison, although
both are classified as swimmers, there is a lot of difference in the looks and action of the two. That is why
we use different patterns for the two of them. If you look at either of them compared to a Trico nymph,
you can see that there is considerable difference in the three of them. Notice the baetis is slim and skinny,
the isonythia has many more gills and is shaped differently, and the trico is much wider, shorter, and flat
than either of the others. When we get into tying each of the perfect fly patterns, we will discuss these
differences and what you can do to better imitate the natural. For now, we are just pointing out that mayfly
nymph are not all alike and that is why we have more than one pattern for a mayfly nymph.
Let start with the most common mayfly there are, the baetis genera or one of the many groups of mayflies
anglers usually call the Blue-Winged Olives. If you can tie and use this one correctly, your going to catch a
lot of trout simply because baetis usually hatch for a longer duration of time and, depending on the species,
as many as two or three times a year.
Beatis nymphs are slim small, swimming nymphs with tiny gills that look and act much like small minnows.
The fuzzy rib of goose biots looks similar and emulates the movement of the tiny gills fairly well. The
tendency in tying the beatis nymphs is to make them to too fat or bulky. Keep the slim and trim. The thorax
is the widest part of the nymph and emergers body. The emergers and duns are also on the skinny side, so
don't tie them to bulky. The only problem with the baetis species is that they have a large range of sizes,
from a size 14 hook to size 24. As you will quickly learn, there is quite a difference in tying a size 14 than
the size 24. In either case, materials must carefully be selected for the specific hook size. We will tie the
size 16 because it is fairly easy to start out tying and easier for you to see the details. We will then show the
steps involved with tying the tiny ones.
(The above is a portion of the program script)
Copyright 2008 James Marsh, All Rights Reserved
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Get Your Ph.D. in Fly-Fishing Right Here!
Tim Doyle demonstrates each procedure in a step-by-step, easy to
follow manner. Three separate camera angles show all the details and
makes fly tying easy.
follow manner. Three separate camera angles show all the details and
makes fly tying easy.
Learn to tie our 7 "Perfect Mayfly" nymph patterns.
By varying the size and color of materials according to
our recipes on the CD (included with the instructional
DVD) you will be able to tie over 80 highly effective
specific imitations of all the important mayfly nymphs
that trout feed on from coast to coast.
By varying the size and color of materials according to
our recipes on the CD (included with the instructional
DVD) you will be able to tie over 80 highly effective
specific imitations of all the important mayfly nymphs
that trout feed on from coast to coast.
These are the seven (7) basic patterns:
1. Perfect Swimmer Nymph
2. Perfect Super Swimmer Nymph
3. Perfect Crawler Nymph
4. Perfect Super Crawler Nymph
5. Perfect Burrower Nymph
6. Perfect Clinger Nymph
7. Perfect Emerging Nymph
1. Perfect Swimmer Nymph
2. Perfect Super Swimmer Nymph
3. Perfect Crawler Nymph
4. Perfect Super Crawler Nymph
5. Perfect Burrower Nymph
6. Perfect Clinger Nymph
7. Perfect Emerging Nymph
$29.95 (DVD and CD)
