Prince Nymph

A nymph, tied #10–18, carried year round. It is tied against 7 named insects in this book, and stands in when nothing is hatching — January–November.

An attractor nymph with white biot wings laid over the back, tied on a 2X heavy nymph hook in sizes 10–18 with black 8/0 thread. Two brown goose biots, split, form the tail; the body is peacock herl ribbed with fine gold oval; a brown hen collar sits behind two white goose biots over the back, and a gold bead finishes the head. It imitates nothing exactly and gets eaten everywhere — riffles, pocket water, and behind a heavier fly. In this book it is tied against the Green Sedge, Isonychia, Little Black Stonefly, Little Yellow Sally, March Brown and October Caddis, and it also goes on when there is no hatch at all and the water has to be searched. Carried all season, for trout. Nobody agrees what it is, and it does not matter.

#10–18Hook size
nymphType
AllSeason
7Hatches matched

What it looks like

A drawing, not a photograph, and not traced from one. Its proportions were read off 5 independent reference photographs of the pattern and written down as 6 measured characteristics — wing angle, tail length against the shank, how far a hackle fibre reaches — every one of which had to hold across more than one of them before it could be drawn. What survives across many photographs of a fly is the fly.

Nothing in a river looks like this, and trout eat it anyway. The two white biots over a dark peacock body are the whole pattern — a flash of pale against dark that reads as an emerging insect's wings. Drawn at #14 — 8.0 mm of shank and 4.0 mm of gape on a Tiemco 100.

The bare hook at every size this pattern is tied in, all to the same scale. There is no industry standard behind a hook number, so these are Tiemco 100 measurements and another maker's 10 will differ a little.

What it imitates

Each of these is the same hatch record the app's own panel reads, so a pattern recommended on a river card in the app is recommended for one of the insects below.

It is also tagged for no hatch at all — a searching pattern.

Tying recipe

In tying order. This dressing is the standard one — these patterns have been in the publicrecord for decades — and materials substitute freely: the proportions and the silhouette are the pattern, not the brand of dubbing.

Hook	2X heavy nymph hook, sizes 10–18
Thread	Black 8/0
Tail	Two brown goose biots, split
Body	Peacock herl, ribbed fine gold oval
Hackle	Brown hen, collar
Wings	Two white goose biots over the back
Head	Gold bead

When to fish it

An attractor nymph. It imitates nothing exactly and gets eaten everywhere — riffles, pocket water, and behind a heavier fly.

Carried all year. The insects it matches are active january–november, in water from 34°F to 70°F.

Target species

Trout

Rivers it fishes well

Rivers with a page here that sit in the regions where the insects this pattern imitates are recorded. It is a claim about coverage, not a report of a fish caught.

Related patterns

Same type of fly, or tied for the same insects.

Open the trout map →Every trout stream near you, coloured by today's water temperature.