How to Tie the Mimic May Dry Fly

Learn how to tie the Mimic May 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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This fly was created by Chris Johnson. It's a nice drake pattern with a high wing that floats low in the water giving a great profile. It can be tied in various colors to match the hatch.

Recipe

• Hook: Mustad R43 1XF/3XL size 12
• Thread: Veevus GSP 50D in Black
• Tail: Moose Body Hair
• Body: Hairline Natural Colored Deer Hair
• Wing: Hairline Natural Colored Deer Hair
• Underwing: Hareline CDC in Brown
• Hackle: Whiting Dry Fly Hackle Cape in Dark Barred Ginger

Video Transcript

Hello, I'm Carl at Trident Fly Fishing. Today we're going to tie the Mimic May. This fly was created by Chris Johnson. It's a nice drake pattern with a high wing that floats low in the water giving a great profile. It can be tied in various colors to match the hatch.

Here's the fly in the vise. The hook we're using today is a Mustad R43 - that's their three extra long, one extra fine dry fly hook. The thread we're going to use today is Veevus GSP 100. Get our thread started about a third of the way down the hook shank and wrap down to the bend of the hook.

The tail for this fly is just going to be some moose body hair, so we only need a couple of fibers. We'll even these out as best we can. We want these to be hook length long, or maybe just a tad longer. I'm going to tie these on right on top of the hook. Make sure they're positioned where we want them, and we're going to wrap once underneath to help stand them up and figure eight to separate them. That looks pretty good. We'll wrap back forward to our tie-in point.

The body of this fly is just going to be some natural deer hair, and we just need a very small clump of this. We just want enough hair to be able to surround the hook shank. Clean out all the short fuzzies and get it in a stacker. I'm going to measure these out so that they just go back to the bend of the hook. Take two loose wraps and manipulate the hair around the hook shank with your fingers. Once you've done that, pull it tight. We're going to make some fairly loose turns back to the bend of the hook, or the start of the bend of the hook. Once we reach that point, you can pull it tight to flare that out a little bit, and then crossing turns back up the hook shank. Cut off our excess material.

Next we're going to tie in our wing. Again, that's just going to be some natural deer hair. I want a clump about half a pencil's width in diameter - it's not a big wing. Clean out all the fuzzies and broken pieces and get this in a stacker. We want this back to just about where the bend of the hook is. Make a couple of loose wraps, hold on to the hair, and pull it tight. Wrap through it. That's just about perfect. Cut off all of our excess material. Now we want to lift up our wing and make a few wraps behind it to help stand it up just a little.

We're going to make a dubbing loop with our thread and take our fancy whirlygig here. I've taken the liberty of preparing some CDC - this is just a light brown color. Get this in the loop. Now we're just going to wrap this material in front of and behind that wing. Tie that off. Now we're going to wrap back to the start of the wing and clean that eye up just a little bit.

Wrap back to the base of the wing. We're going to tie in our hackle here. That's from a Whiting dry fly cape and this is a dark barred ginger. I've already got one feather pulled out. Prep it by snipping some barbules off on either side of the stem to create a tie-in point. We'll start to make our wraps, reach the eye, capture it, and cut off our excess. Small head. Four or five turn whip finish. We've managed to capture some of that material, so the eye will have to be corrected.

Now to finish out this fly - it was designed to float low in the water, so we're going to take our scissors and cut everything off on the bottom of that shank. A little head cement - this one is water-based. Clear out the eye and our fly is finished.

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