How to Tie the Trico Spinner Fly Pattern

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

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Trout fill up on tricos end of summer through fall, this pattern matches them perfectly.

While tricos are one of the tiniest mayflies there is, they form massive clouds and trout suck them down almost every morning from the end of summer until things cool down in the fall. This trico spinner carries a very natural profile and is quite easy to tie. Tie it in sizes 22 and 24 and you'll be ready for any spinner fall that you encounter.

Recipe

• Hook: Daiichi 1310 (size: 22)
• Thread: Veevus 16/0 Fly Tying Thread
• Tail: Hareline Mayfly Tails (color: white or dun)
• Body: Hareline Super Fine Dry Fly Dubbing (color: black)
• Wing: Hareline Polypropylene Floating Yarn

Video Transcript

Hey guys, Levi here with Trident Fly Fishing, and today we're going to be tying a Trico spinner. This is a tiny mayfly - it's probably one of the smallest mayflies. I think there may be a blue-winged olive that's a little smaller. We're going to tie it on a size 22 hook. This is a real fun spinner fall to fish late in the season, August, maybe into October, depending on what your weather is doing. 24 is another good size. It's a small one, but it's a pretty simple fly, so let's dive into that right now.

In the vise we have a Daiichi 1310 size 22 hook. It's a super small hook, but it just matches these mayflies, unfortunately. You can tie it in a 24 as well. We're going to run some black Veevus 16/0 thread down the length of the shank and clip that excess out of the way.

What I'm going to do now is create a little thread bump here to splay out our microfibbet tails. This isn't quite necessary, but I do tend to just prefer having those naturally splayed tails on a mayfly spinner. This will match all of those spinner falls that you encounter for the Trico, which is a late-season hatcher, usually in August, into maybe the end of November, or generally when the first frost happens.

Now we're going to use some of these mayfly tails. This is a light dun color - you could also use white, but I kind of just prefer this. We're going to grab three of these filaments off, because the Trico does have three tails. If you want, you can certainly tie four in so you have sort of one as an insurance policy, but I'm going to just try to maintain some realism here. I want to measure this to be a little over the length of the hook shank. We'll get them tied down right on top. You can get a loose wrap in there and then manipulate them as needed. Get in here with your scissor points and just separate these. There's really no way I can do this without blocking the camera, but that little bump works to your advantage. You can also slip a bit of thread just behind it, and you'll see how that now is cocked upward and will sit well on the surface film. Now I'm going to clip that excess.

We're going to bring our thread about an eye's length, maybe an eye and a half, right behind the eye. For wings, we're going to use polypropylene yarn in the color white. I have just a little bit here - this isn't a whole lot of fibers, but you don't want that for such a small fly. Go ahead and cut that off, and then we will tie this in for our wings. This is an overly generous amount, but I'm going to put this right on top of the hook shank and just tie it on in. We'll hit it with a few figure-eight wraps. Short of this fly being really tiny, it's actually quite easy and straightforward. This is my go-to pattern any time I'm fishing a Trico spinner fall, which I used to do quite a bit of when I lived in Pennsylvania. Now we're going to clip this out of the way - just pull it up. We want it to be about one and a half times the gap of the hook. That looks good to me.

For the body of this fly, we're going to use Superfine Dry Fly Dubbing in the color black. I'm not using a whole lot of dubbing whatsoever - it is a very tiny amount. We're going to go ahead and apply this to our thread now. You want to get it evenly on there, and again, less is definitely more for this pattern. We want to bring our thread right in front of the tail, move this dubbing up as needed, and we'll go ahead and wind the body.

You will see these wing fibers sometimes get stuck, and we can trim those out as needed after the fly is done. Sometimes I'll sort of twist this wing fiber and that will kind of orient it where I need it to stay. As I approach the thorax, I'm just building a little bit of bulk here. These mayflies, if you see the real ones, they almost look comical - they're quite chunky despite being a spinner. Get rid of some of this dubbing I overshot. Just behind the eye, I'm going to do my final wraps of dubbing and hit it with a half hitch, then come in here and whip finish it. And that will be your Trico spinner. Be careful not to crowd the eye, obviously, but we did a good job. That fly is done.

I want to thank you guys for watching and I will see you next time.