At the request of Sweenytodd I have done a SBS of Oliver Edwards Mohican Mayfly.
Materials;
Hook: B100 or short shank, wide gape wet fly hook but not too heavy in the wire
Detached body: Cream/ivory foam
Tails: Moose mane
Mohican Wing: Short fine deer hair dyed yellow/yellow olive
Hackle: Medium/dark dun and grizzly dyed yellow one of each, two turns
First of all you need to construct the detached body. Place a thinnish needle in the vice. Select four Moose mane hairs for the tail, tie on your thread (Moser powersilk or similar GSP thread) at the end of the needle and tie down the Moose fibers with a length of approximately one inch.
Cut the body from a piece of cream/ivory foam. I have trimmed my sheet of foam to ten centimetres wide, cut a tapered body from around four to five millimetres at the ends tapering down to two to three millimetres in the middle. With the tapers facing each other cut a "V" notch in the middle so that when you put it on the needle the tail comes out in the middle of the end of the foam.
Fold the foam together with the notch facing up and slot the foam onto the needle coming up from underneath. Tie your first segment around two millimetres long, pull the foam apart and spiral the thread along the needle twice for every segment.
Make five segments with each gradually getting longer (although this is contrary to the natural whose segments get longer towards the tail) and whip finish on the last segment thread wraps. Make sure the thread ends and tail fibers are kept inside the foam body. The body wants to be around three quarters of an inch, you will tie one more segment on the hook. Slide off the needle, this is where GSP helps.
Its best to prepare a few at a time.
Next job is to tie the wing on. Place your hook in the vice, tie on your thread (again powersilk) and lay down a thread base. Select a bunch of of yellow dyed deer hair, I have a patch from Wapsi which is short and fine. Prepare the bunch of hair by stripping the underfur away and stacking so the points are nice and lined up. I have used a Kamasan B100 size ten, I tie in the deer hair around half way along the top portion of the hook. The wing wants to be around three quarters to one inch in length and the density of the wing is best judged by your eye, just make sure it isn't too dense.
Neaten up the base of the wing and compact it down with some thread wraps, varnish to help secure it. Attach the detached body by tying down the thread ends and tail fibers. Tie down leaving enough room for one more segment, make another segment which should butt up against the wing.
Tie in your hackles, these are one medium to dark dun and one grizzly dyed yellow, these will be tied in parachute style so they can be a little longer in the fiber than usual. Cover the tread wraps and wing base with some dark dubbing.
Wrap both hackles around the wing and foam strips which should be pointing upwards, ensure the hackles are slotting into the thread wraps of the last segment on the body. I generally wrap the hackles twice each and you can either wrap them together or singularly. OE says to do it three times each but I find that there are too many fibers from three wraps.
Tie down the hackles trying not to trap to many fibers, any that you do can be pulled out with a dubbing needle. Separate the hackle fibers at the front of the fly ensuring they are evenly distributed, keeping them separated take the foam strips and stretch them slightly keeping the wing in between the foam, pull the foam forward keeping it stretched, tie down at the eye. Wrap thread back towards the wing crushing down the foam, taking care not to cut through the foam as GSP will slice through foam with too much tension.
Pull back the foam strips and tie down the foam again in the gap between the hook eye and wing, this forms a neat little head and keeps the eye clean. Do a quick whip finish, stretch the foam and cut close, do another whip finish in this area which crushes the foam separating the head from the thorax. Colour the thorax with a dark brown marker, black dots for eyes and brown marks on the upper and lower abdomen.
Enjoy.
OE Mohican Mayfly
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