Ephemera danica

Again, a new pattern I’ve been working on. It’s quite easy to tie, and for once doesn’t involve a parachute hackle. Can be adopted to any may fly species, but will be quite fiddly in smaller sizes.

I’m thinking that it might be a good idea to use flashabou for the wings instead of the usual poly yearn. The extended body is very simple but doesn’t have any tail fibers. Technically in a dun imitation they should never get in contact with water and so it shouldn’t make a difference if you tie them in or not, I’m sure fish can’t see them so well on the real duns either. In duns the wing is usually less reflective and more matte, and the spinners (which have more reflective wings) are really only expected to be on the surface as spents, so I’m not really sure if it is the flashabou wing is the right choice. Will have to wait until next spring to find out, unfortunately…

Extended body mayfly

This is my version of the extended body mayfly dun. I use thin packaging foam, preferably the  version with a reinforced plastic on one side (not the stuff I used in this video), it’s more durable and thinner. There are two reasons to tie the extended body around this foam. First, you can use glue without risking to glue the whole thing to the needle (you can very easily pull out the body once it’s done) and secondly, once you pull away the needle it fills the empty space making it durable and at the same time very light and high floating. The power flex super glue stays flexible in contrast to some other superglues. In terms of dubbing for dry flies, I always use CDC, if I can.

This is a general pattern that works down to quite small size, as I have shown in this video. Use more hackle for rapid water and less for slower.

Music: http://incompetech.com