Wet/Dry Fly
Our weather has gone from cool and rainy to hot and then some with powerful T-sotrms, hail, and tornadoes in only a few days. Today, June 7, the temp. in north central Wisconsin will hit 91-93. That’s August weather. Of course it has really played a mind game with the hatches. The Hendrickson’s which had been fading suddenly gave way to the Pale Evening Dun (also called the Light Hendrickson). This Ephemerella mayfly (usually E. rotunda and E. invaria) is not the true sulphur (E. dorothea) but looks quite similar, and is one hook size larger. As a consequence, one can use the same fly designs and colors for both.
My favorite imitation during the hatch is not the dun, but a stage 5 emerger imitation I call the Wet/Dry Fly. It started out as a wet fly (as classic soft hackle) and ended up one of my most favorite dry flies for smaller mayflies. It’s lethal in the PMD hatch, the Pale Evening Dun hatch, the Baetis hatch, and others. The body is dubbing of the color of the adult. The hackle is a soft bird body feather of the color of the insect’s wings. Not much to it (only one more reason to love it). I put fly floatant on it and fish it right up on top (actually it rides awash in the film).
Sizxe 16 for the Pale Evening Dun and size 18 for the Sulphur. Dub on the body. Strip the marabou fluff off the bottom of the hackling feather, stroke the fibers backward, clip off the very tip of the feather, leaving a small triangle of fibers right at the tip. Tie in the triangle tip in preparation for winding the hackle.
Wind the hackle, tie it off, and finish the fly. Winding the feather tip first gives you a nice solid feather shaft to grab onto with the hackle pliers and gives the fly a cleaner appearance. A good drop of thin, flexible head cement on the thread of the head and the base of the hackle will make the fly very tough indeed.