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
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.
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.
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.
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 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 2011 James Marsh, All Rights Reserved
| Fly Fishing DVD |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
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.
easy to 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.
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)
Length: 1 hour, 20 min plus 25 min. promos. Total 1 hr. 45 min.
1 - 800 - 594 - 4726
| DVD Now Comes with 7 "Perfect Fly" Flies - One sample each of these flies: 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 This is $13.85 Worth of Fee "Perfect Fly" Mayflies |
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.
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.
