Mayfly Improvisation

After my last outing to the Wharfe a week ago, and having seen a few rises, I decided I didn't have enough dry flies tied up and seeing as its May I decided to try my hand at some Mayflies for the first time. These are a hybrid of Peter Gathercole's CDC Drake from from Fly tying for Beginners, and the CDC Mayfly in issue 5 of eat-sleep-fish.co.uk.

 With a little improvisation I tied this on Partridge Kilnkhammer hooks with a cream spectrablend body, brown thread for the markings, deer hair tail, CDC wing and furnace hackle (underside trimmed away).

With these tied up and a Monday off work I headed out to the river hoping to get some use out of the four I tied.

 The pool heading upstream from this photo holds some fish, I have seen them but I am yet to net any! I am sure there are fish downstream (below) but it needs some more water as it was very static.

Anyways, I fished for 4 hours, saw a few rises of dark olives, but unfortunately no fish and didn't get to try out my freshly tied Mayflies....Luckily my weekend schedule is free for all of May so I'm sure I'll get the chance!

Hope everyone else is having better luck than me at the beginning of the season!