Walker's Mayfly Nymph
Cream angora wool over a lead underbody, ribbed with brown thread, with cock pheasant fibres for tail, wing case and legs — Richard Walker's imitation of the Green Drake nymph, and still the standard after decades. The burrowing danica nymph is a big, pale, soft-bodied thing that swims badly, and this catches all three of those qualities. Tied on a long shank because the natural is genuinely that size.
Any month, not just mayfly time — danica spends two years as a nymph, so it is in the silt and available to trout the whole year round. The fortnight before the hatch is when the naturals are most active and the fly is at its deadliest, but a big pale nymph worked slow and deep along a silty margin is worth fishing in August or October just as much. Sink it, then lift: the naturals ascend clumsily and a slow draw imitates that better than any retrieve. Effective on reservoirs and stillwaters as well as rivers.
Pale cream is the right colour for a nymph that has spent two years in silt, and the lead underbody puts the fly at the depth the naturals actually live at — which is where they are every month, hatch or no hatch. The lift is what triggers the take: a danica nymph heading for the surface is the least evasive food a trout will see all year.
