Bodkin / Patterns

May Day

Dry Fly · Trout · Grayling · Intermediate · 3 versions

Tyer Recipe

  • Hook Umpqua XC110BL-BN (barbless dry), 14-18
  • Thread Grey Veevus 14/0

Materials

  • Macrame yarn Smoke macrame yarn (tail/shuck and wing/post)
  • Hare's mask dubbing Brown olive ice dub (abdomen and thorax)
  • Grizzly saddle hackle Grizzly hackle (1, oversized)

How to tie it

  1. Start grey thread a couple eye-widths back on a #16 hook, tie in a thin clump of smoke macrame yarn, and wrap back to the bend for a long tail/shuck.
  2. Dub a slim, slightly tapered abdomen of brown-olive hare's mask forward to the 60% point.
  3. Tie in a clump of smoke macrame yarn at the 60% point as the hackle-stacker base and make a couple parachute wraps around its base.
  4. Tie in an oversized grizzly hackle at the base of the wing post with the outside of the feather up.
  5. Clip the wing post in hackle pliers and hold it taut, wrap the hackle up the post to just short of the eye, wrap back down through it, sweep the fibers back, and tie the hackle off to the shank.
  6. Dub a hare's mask thorax around the base, leaving a bare index space behind the eye.
  7. Hold the wing taut, part the hackle, fold the yarn wing forward over the top, and pull down to splay the hackle across the top (thorax style); tie it down.
  8. Fold the wing back and lash it in staggered loops to build an upright wing, whip finish, and trim the wing a bit longer than the hackle.

Other versions

2 more in the app: Morrish's, RIO's Morrish.

Tying videos

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