Black Mayflies

These are typical dark bodied size 12 black mayflies. I like to tie them with marabou tails because it is easy and it does a good job of imitating the gills on the tails of the mud dwelling callibaetis mayflies that are prevalent in most of the lakes I fish.  I usually bury a bead or some lead in the thorax section since I usually have best luck fishing these patterns near the bottom. I dub the thorax with any sort of buggy dubbing, and usually use peacock herl for the wing case.

Sometimes the callibaetis mayflies are noticably brown and in these cases, brown seems to catch more fish than black.  This pattern did well for me this Spring (1999).

The Pheasant Tail Nymph is a classic nymph and it works very well in northwest lakes.