Frank Sawyer tied the Pheasant Tail on the Hampshire Avon in the 1950s from two materials, cock pheasant tail fibres and fine copper wire, to imitate the slim swimming mayfly nymphs of a chalk stream. It has since become the general nymph of the world, and in Australia it is the slim, dark half of the starter pair with a Hare’s Ear on every trout stream from the Snowy Mountains to Tasmania’s rivers and the streams of the south-west of Western Australia. Fish it weighted through pocket water and runs, and unweighted in the film when mayflies are emerging and the fish will not take a dry.

From the bend forward: a tail of three or four cock pheasant tail fibres. A slim abdomen of the same fibres wound forward, ribbed with fine copper wire in open turns (on Sawyer’s original the wire is the thread, the weight and the rib at once). A thorax of peacock herl, or a small ball of dubbing on modern ties, over an underbody of wire for weight. A wing case of pheasant tail fibres pulled forward over the thorax and tied down. A tungsten bead at the eye on the bead-head version, copper or black. A thread head on the bead-less tie.

For selective, heavily fished trout, a Pheasant Tail is a strong first nymph when other patterns fail. A size sixteen tungsten flashback is the starting point for Euro nymphing Australian streams; a slim, lightly weighted one is the early-season pattern for lethargic cold fish; a weighted Pheasant Tail fifty to sixty centimetres under a dry is the small-stream rig early, late and after rain. On the upper Eucumbene the clear-day nymph is a dull Pheasant Tail with a black bead and little flash, and a flashback under a Royal Wulff took rainbows near Kiandra; on the Mowamba a sixteen bead-head under a Tabanas dry is a standard rig; on the upper Meander a hotspot version is the fly for the heavy nymphing the river needs; on the Monaro an unweighted one is fished when trout are not showing. Sight-fishing rainbows in slow clear water, a natural copper bead is preferred over anything loud, because a fish in an open lie spooks at a bright fly.

Weight it enough to tick the bed in the water you are actually fishing, not the water you walked past. In a pocket, drop it at the head, let it sink, and lead it through on a tight line so you feel the take. In a run, a dead drift under an Adams or a foam hopper as a dry-dropper covers more water with less guessing.

If you are not ticking occasionally, you are too light. If you are hanging up every cast, you are too heavy or fishing the rocks instead of the seam. Change weight before you change fly. See nymphing pocket water for the rig and the mistakes that cost fish, and carry a Hare’s Ear beside it for the day the fish want the fatter fly.