Spring is in the air, but the hills are alive with the sound of mucus. I‘m “under the weather,” as the saying goes, even though the morning is warm and sunny, and I’m longing to wade a clear stream far, far from my sickroom. I look at my vise, where, earlier, I had tied my favorite soft-hackle fly pattern. I am excited soon to be fishing one of my favorite
insect hatches, the March Brown mayfly. I call this wonderful emergence “the gentleman’s hatch,” because March Browns hold banking hours. The hatch on my local water begins between 9:00 and 10:00 in the morning, when this easily spotted brown mayfly drifts along, drying its wings. Then, in the afternoon, it returns as a spinner, bobbing up and down in the air and mating. Finally the delicate insect descends to the water to lay eggs and dies spent, wings flat to the surface.
That soft hackle in my vise is a great trickster, capable of fooling trout into gobbling it both during the initial hatch, as an emerger or cripple, and during the spinner fall. Here’s how to tie the fly.
Select a 2X-long curved hook, such as a TMC 2312, size 12 or 14. Mount the hook in the vise and attach your 8/0 burnt-orange or brown thread a quarter of the way down the shank from the eye. For the tail, select two pheasant tail fibers and tie them down along the top of the hook, wrapping back toward the bend. Stop just short of the spot above the barb. Then take a wrap behind and underneath the fibers, lifting and spreading the tails. Wrap forward two turns and stop. Spread the tails and add a small drop of flexible cement.
For the abdomen, attach a rusty-spinner-colored turkey biot by its tip. Now tie in a piece of fine copper wire next to the biot; this will be used to enhance durability. Wrap the biot three-quarters of the way up the shank and tie it off (it doesn’t matter whether you wrap the biot with its smooth side or ridged side facing outward). Next, counterwrap the wire, finishing in front of the biot tie-off point.
At the thorax, tie-down five pheasant fibers on top of the shank where you secured the wire. These will become a wing case. Next, dub the abdomen with a mixture of rust-colored dubbing and a tiny pinch of UV pink Ice Dub. Dub the thread lightly, wrap a small ball, and tie off, leaving enough room in front to tie in a partridge hackle.
Now pull the five pheasant fibers firmly over the dubbing ball and secure them. Finally, tie in a partridge hackle, making one full turn to create a circle of legs, tie off, snip away the excess, whip finish, cement the head wraps, and you are done.
It’s a great-looking fly. I fish it many ways. You can waterproof it with desiccant powder and float it as trapped dun in the meniscus. In the afternoon, you can float it as a spinner. And I love to swing it as a drowned mayfly. I hope this pattern works as well for you as it has for me over the years.
— Andy Guibord
