Fly Fishing and the Life of a Mayfly

There was a time when the only fish you were trying to catch with a fly was trout. The fly was a bit of feather and a bit of fur on a hook. Today fly fishing anglers can fish for trout, salmon, pike, carp, chub, bass and on and on.

Key Thing About Fly Fishing

The key thing about a fly is the lack of weight. The weight of the thing at the end of your line bends your rod and is catapulted to where you want to fish. A fly has very little weight. By using a heavy line in a bull-whip motion you can propel your fly to where you want to fish.

The fly when properly delivered sails through to your target and will land very softly. A fly may well work when nothing else seems to do the trick.

The life of a Mayfly.

A mayfly starts out as an egg on the bottom of a stream. Soon the egg hatches and out crawls a many-legged little creature called a nymph.

When you see trout with their noses down rooting about on the bottom of a stream they are often feeding on nymphs.

Nearly one year to the day when it began life as an egg the nymph is ready to hatch and to become a hatch.

The emerging stage begins when all the mayflies of a particular species (and millions of mayflies may be in a single stretch of stream) shed their old skin, rise to the surface, sprout wings, dry themselves and for the first time fly.

When this particular time is evolving, between when they begin to shed their skin and when they take their first flight the mayfly is at its most vulnerable. When a hatch is on the trout know that there is plenty of easy-to-catch food around just for the taking.

Many mayflies for one reason or another are not able to shed their wings and are therefore easy prey.

For the mayflies that evolve and fly for the first time they head for cover in trees and bushes. Soon the males fly over and mate in mid-air. The male drops to the surface of the stream and dies. The female deposits her eggs in the stream and also dies. Life starts a new cycle.

There are too many flies to compare in this short work. So many books are available from specialist fly fishermen. But hope this sparks an interest in a brilliant sport.