Designing Dry Flies for Streams & Rivers

By Brian Smith

In the world of fly-fishing authors like me, more literature has been written about mayflies than any other insect on earth. I do not think, however, the subject of mayflies, their life cycles or the fly patterns which can represent them can ever be exhausted because they are such an intimate topic for those fly tiers that choose to spend their lives imitating them. All of the flies designed for mayflies during the last two centuries: the Cahills, Variants, Quill Gordons, Adamses, Wulff’s et all will still catch fish as well today as they did fifty, one, or two hundred years ago. What is still relevant and most important today in our more heavily-fished, competitive waters continues to be the size and colour of the fly, and the impression of the insect that fly tiers impose on their hooks.