Fly of the day! Murray's Mr. Rapidan Dry Fly

After a long hiatus in the fly of the day series, we return today with one of the best in my box, Murray's Mr. Rapidan Dry Fly. This is another of the patterns developed by Harry Murray of Virginia fly fishing fame. The pattern is an excellent general dry fly pattern that is nearly guaranteed to produce on mountain trout streams. It does a nice job of imitating the March Brown mayfly and is an excellent search pattern. Best of all, the yellow hair wing is easily visible from as far as I can cast and does not blend in with flotsam as a white wing may. The fly is heavily hackled, and with the additional floatation provided by the hair wing and tail it will ride rough currents almost like a cork. I fish this fly in sizes #12-#16 from March to November.

Murray's Mr. Rapidan Dry Fly

Hook: Dry fly hook #12-#16
Thread: Brown or black
Tail: Black deer or moose hair
Wing: Yellow-died calf's tail, split to form separate wings (see below)
Body: Light brown natural dubbing (hare's ear pictured) mixed with sulfur superfine dubbing
Hackle: Heavily hackle using coachman brown hackle and grizzly hackle.

Fly tying, marabou nymph

I could post hundreds of links to more-complete fly-tying information (and eventually, I will give some of these I am sure), but for this blog, I will exhibit some of the things I do to create flies that catch the beautiful native and wild trout that inhabit SWVA waters.

First, I'm proud of the fly tying station that went up just this weekend!














Now, I would love to chronicle the flies that I tie as 'fly of the []' []=day, week, month, although I realize fully that the ambition I have now to do so will fade with time.... But for today, the 'Fly of the Day' is one I call the Marabou Nymph tied in olive in the photo below. I did not invent this pattern, but it was shown to me on the stream one day and it works. I caught and released native brook trout all day Saturday on the black version.
Marabou Nymph












Thread: 8/0 Brown
Tail: Olive marabou tips
Dubbing: Olive-died hare
Rib: Gold 'Ultra-Wire'
Legs: Clipped marabou
Hook: 12 streamer
Head: 5/32 oz. gold bead