Before we get to new fly Wednesday if you want to see me tie flies in person...I will be at the California Fly Shop Fly tying day this Saturday Dec. 6 from 10am-4pm tying and talking about fly tying with many other great Northern California Fly tiers.

So, while I have come up with some new flies to release through MFC I am also releasing some of my staple patterns. One of the first flies I ever developed was the Military May Fly series. I came up with this pattern in the late 90’s when I was tying with a lot glass beads. I got into tying with glass beads as my number one go to caddis pattern on the Lower Yuba was a Petis Pulsating Caddis pattern…still a great pattern and one I tie and fish a lot but hard to find commercially. Petis had a contract with Umpqua and I am not even sure Umpqua still ties this his patterns.

I came up with this fly after seeing some thread body midge patterns like the zebra midge with clear glass beads. Around this same time my girl friend (now my wife) drug me to the bead store all the time and I began to discover bead stores and craft stores in general as resources for fly tying material…that and you can buy bulk stuff at half, if not more then half the cost, of the same stuff at a fly shop…re-packaging cost money.

The beauty of the military mayfly is the versatility of the basic pattern. This fly can be tied in any color thread, glass beads, wire, and dubbing come in…which means that any tier can make this fly in any color combo they see fit. Also they can mix and match colors of thread, wire, and dub with various beads and such to see what works.

I tend to fish the olive, PMD (rust), and black colors the most in sizes #16-20 but for MFC they will be released in #14-20. For the MFC release I have changed bead colors of all the beads, along with changing wire and dubbing colors to the ones that I have updated over the years. The bottom line is these are now updated patterns, and are just like the ones that I tie for my box.

If you are a tier I would encourage you to tie this pattern in some different colors mix and match and see what works for on your body of water.