How to Tie the White Moth Dry Fly

Learn how to tie the White Moth Dry Fly pattern, including step-by-step instructions, a video tutorial, pictures, and much more. Improve your fly-tying skills here.

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I don't know much about the history of this fly. It shows up in the book Hatches and Fly patterns of the Great Smokey Mountains by Don Kirk. The pattern is about 75 years old and came out of western North Carolina. This is great pattern that is easy to see and floats well. During the summer months there seems to be no shortage of small moths flying around the streams and ponds I fish.

Recipe

• Hook: TMC 100 in size 14
• Thread: Veevus 8/0 in White
• Wing: Hareline Hen Neck; White
• Rib: UTC Extra Small Copper Wire
• Body: Hareline Superfine Dry Fly Dubbing; White
• Hackle: Whiting Dry Fly Cape in Cream; White

Video Transcript

Hello, I'm Carl at Trident Fly Fishing. Today we're going to tie the white moth dry fly. It shows up in the book Hatches and Fly Patterns of the Great Smoky Mountains by Don Kirk. The pattern is about 75 years old and came out of western North Carolina. It's a great pattern that's easy to see, it floats well, and during the summer months there seems to be no shortage of small moths flying around the streams and ponds that I fish.

Here's the fly in the vise. The hook today is a TMC 100BL - that's the barbless version of their 100 dry fly hook. Really nice hook. The thread we're going to be using is Veevus 8/0 in white. We'll start our tie with the thread about an eye length and a half behind the hook eye, wrap back to about the midpoint, and back up.

For the wing, we're using Whiting hen hackle from their cape in cream color. We'll pull out a couple of appropriately small feathers from up near the very end of the neck. We're going to meet these together so that the shiny sides face each other. We want this wing to be as tall as the length of the hook, so we'll measure that out and make a pinch wrap. Tie those feathers in on top and run our thread back to the midpoint. Cut off our excess material. Come back forward, pull our wings back, and we're going to form a thread dam just in front of those feathers. That's going to stand the feathers up for us, like so. Then some crossing turns and X-turns to further separate the wings.

We're going to run our thread back to where the bend of the hook starts and tie in our tail material. That's going to be white hackle fibers. Select some fibers, pull them out 90 degrees to the shaft of the feather, strip them off, and measure these out to be hook shank in length. Tie these in right on top of the hook shank and wrap forward. Cut off our excess material.

Next we'll tie in the rib material, which is going to be UTC Ultra Wire, extra small in copper. Tie this in on the near side of the hook and wrap back to the base of the tail.

Our body for this fly is going to be Superfine Dry Fly Dubbing from Hareline. Make sure you have clean fingers when you use this white dubbing or your body is going to come out a different color. Now we'll take our rib material and open spiral that forward. It reinforces the dubbing and adds a little bit of sparkle to the fly in the water. It broke in the wrong place - we'll fix that.

The last material we're going to tie in is our hackle. This is from a cream colored neck sized to the hook. Prepare it by snipping off several barbules from the base, leaving some stubby material so we have some purchase for our thread. Tie that in right behind the wing, like so. Bring our thread forward all the way to the hook eye. Now we'll make three wraps - maybe four - behind the wing. Move our hackle forward, pulling the wing back and keeping the hackle up close to the wing. Capture the feather, snip off our excess, and form a small head.

Grab our whip finish tool and do a four or five turn whip finish. Cut our thread. Looks like we managed to capture a couple. Add some head cement - this is Loon's water based, soaks in well. And there we have our completed fly.

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