Mop Fly

Other

Tied By Darrell Olson

Hook: Saber #7051, Shrimp & Caddis Pupa, Size 8

Thread: 210 Chartreuse (Color to match Mop Material)

Materials-

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

Notes:

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.