James May

I've been slowly preparing my dries for trout season and got around to a few mayflies tonight and I thought I'd share the mayfly pattern, especially as it landed some beauties for me last season, including some monster wild browns pictured on my blog. The only change this year is a different body material called vetwrap which is a roll of horse bandage I bought from a saddlery although there are many different makes and the colours are difficult to obtain so read on.
This idea was recently shown to me by Wendy Gibson on a fly tying demo, she also used a brown colour for the Daddy (detached body) which also looked the business. Wendy informs me should anyone wish to obtain ready to go bodies or require the material or make any other flytying enquiries, please don't hesitate to contact her, she won't bite fliesbywendyg@hotmail.co.uk.
Anyway, Vetwrap seemed to do the trick nicely for me, just cut a small piece off and lay pheasant tails inside before rolling it up tighter at one end for the taper. The beauty is this stuff is self sticking without adhesive, like Tommy Cooper said "just like that".

This is a very easy and quick fly to dress which inevitably will be devastating sooner or later all over Derbyshire. I've decided to name it the James May because the hackle has similar colours to James May's hair and their both scruffy looking. Notice I leave the hackle long as sometimes flies can be taken more readily when left in their natural state on the underside. In my experience its worth experimenting while actually fishing with the fly, start trimming underneath to slowly sink further into the film until you get a response. I practice this with all my hackled flies rather than taking the usual professional advice of trimming the hackle underneath before you even start fishing, that way you'd never know would you, unless your Doctor Doolittle.