FLY
Mop Fly
Mop Fly recipe
| Hook | Saber #7051, Shrimp & Caddis Pupa, Size 8 |
|---|---|
| Thread | 210 Chartreuse (Color to match Mop Material) |
| Bead | Cyclops Bead Eyes 3/16 (4.3mm) Black |
| Body | Chartreuse Mop Finger (Cream, Greens, Pinks, Oranges, Tans, Purples…They will all work.) |
| Collar | Peacock Ice Dub |
About this fly
Call it a trash fly, call it a revolution, call it what you want. But you cannot deny that Mop Flies catch fish, and most of the time, a lot of them. Once a well-kept Smoky Mountain secret, the mop fly has exploded onto the fly fishing scene and into our fly boxes since its cover was first blown in a Wall Street Journal article. History In the late 90s, Jim Estes, walked through his local dollar store in Bryson City, North Carolina, and came upon something that would spark a big flame in the fly fishing world, a pad of thick, brightly-colored microfiber nubs. “I just saw that thing and thought it would work,” says Jim Estes, a 72-year-old retiree to the Wall Street Journal. Jim, a long-time experimental fly tyer, tied one of the spongy nubs onto a hook weighted with a bead head and gave it a dubbing collar. Not only was the fly simple to tie, but when he took it out on his local waters, the thing went to work and fooled plenty of trout. Originally, the pattern was tied to mimic the lime green Sourwood Worms (A.K.A. Catawba Worms) that hatch over creeks in the Smokies every summer. Anglers quickly realized, however, that the action of the mop finger hanging off a hook fooled plenty of fish when the worms weren’t hatching. And thus the legend of the Mop Fly began, spreading quickly through word of mouth; a small group of competitive fly anglers, and was even a part of Lance Egan’s bid to take home the US National Fly Fishing World Championships in the summer of 2016.
What the Mop Fly imitates
- Crane Fly
Where the Mop Fly came from
- Originated by Jim Estes, 1998, Bryson City / Cherokee, North Carolina. Mac Brown says late 1990s, from dollar-store mop microfiber, first for sourwood worms; SFF Hall of Fame says early 2000s while guiding in Cherokee.Source: Mac Brown Fly Fishing: Mop Fly Mania History; also Southern Fly Fishing Hall of Fame: James Douglas 'Jim' Estes <https://southernflyfishinghalloffame.com/hof-inductee/james-douglas-jim-estes/>
- Popularized by Umpqua Feather Merchants / Fly Fishing Team USA Youth, 2018. Youth team competition wins and 2016 press (WSJ, London Times) spread it; Umpqua catalogued it as the Umpqua Mop in 2018.Source: Mac Brown Fly Fishing: Mop Fly Mania History
Where sources tell it differently, each account is listed with its own source.
Inside the vault every material on this fly opens to its own card, and you can save the fly to your own boxes.
