Fly Tier's Bench: Shanafelt's 3 Mile PMD

At this point in my life as an angler and fly tier, I feel pretty confident fishing most hatches. I have a solid set of go-to flies to cover all the major emerging insects—at least on my local streams where I fish most often. And at the risk of sounding cocky, I feel like I can walk up to any river and stand a pretty good chance of putting a whooping on them. Except when PMDs are hatching.

I have a love-hate relationship with these damn bugs. Pale Morning Duns are those pretty, light yellow mayflies that hatch dependably on most Western rivers throughout the summer. They make for great fishing, from nymphs and emergers to adults and finally spinners. The catch with PMDs—compared to most other mayflies—is that rather than hatching at the surface like respectable insects, PMDs often emerge as winged adults under the water—then the fully mature bugs swim to the surface, pop through, and fly off.

It doesn’t always work out quite the way they’d hoped. In this variable emergence, many PMDs become trapped in their nymphal shucks at various stages of undress. The lucky ones break completely free and pop to the surface to dry their wings before flitting off to bankside vegetation. The ones that aren’t so lucky get hung up in the stage of half nymph–half adult, floundering around at the surface, struggling to free themselves.

It is this “unfortunate” stage that trout often key on, and it can be the most exciting or frustrating fishing of the year.

My own PMD box has at least a dozen different crippled/damp/emerger/dry patterns in it, all of which have worked at one time or another. But none of them works all the time.

I must be some sort of masochist, but I must admit I especially enjoy this particular hatch-matching exercise because it can be so hard to dial in. Picking out a specific rising fish and trying to ascertain exactly what it’s eating is technical dry-fly fishing at the highest level, and I can spend an hour working a single fish. Sometimes coming away empty handed is the best thing that can happen to a serious fly tier.

Enter Pete Shanafelt, a 42-year-old lifelong guide who lives on the Bighorn River in southeast Montana. Pete has guided all over the Rocky Mountain West, and like me he’s fished many challenging PMD hatches. Trying to come up with a fly pattern to match PMDs that are trapped in their shucks and hang up in or just under the surface is sort of a holy grail among the devoted. And Pete has a pretty good skeleton key for exactly this situation with his 3 Mile PMD pattern.

Shanafelt originally came up with this fly to fish subsurface, but discovered that a couple of false casts quickly dried out the CDC collar, allowing it to sit on the surface—with the loose feather tendrils rolling and lolling about. It looked like the natural insect.

My first glimpse of the 3 Mile PMD reminded me of a simple Green Drake imitation I’ve fished for years, with a similarly wrapped CDC collar. I knew Shanafelt’s fly would produce the same sort of built-in action and movement—and that he was clearly a great fly tier and a man of good taste.

To tie the 3 Mile PMD, Shanafelt starts off with the Tiemco 9300, a stouter hook than usual for dry flies. This is no doubt to ensure it holds up to all the giant fish he catches, but also because it makes the fly sit just a bit lower in the surface film. He ties the fly using fire orange thread to leave a hotspot-style head once it’s finished. The back end is a few strands of ringneck pheasant tail topped with a sparse shuck of dark Z-Lon. The abdomen is a familiar wrapped pheasant tail counter-ribbed with copper wire.

Moving to the thorax, Shanafelt employs shrimp pink Ice Dub to add a bit of sparkle and shine. Then he ties in a short-clipped Poly Yarn wing that lies back over the body of the fly.

The CDC collar is what really sets this fly apart. Shanafelt ties in a light-dun-colored CDC feather by its tip, carefully folding back the stub to ensure durability, then wraps it two turns to create a ragged, wild, soft-hackle collar just behind the hook eye.

Shanafelt’s 3 Mile PMD can, of course, be fished under an indicator early in the hatch or on a dropper behind a bigger dry fly as things progress, letting it just sort of wallow around on or under the surface depending on where the currents move it. But once the fish start to key in on the hatching adults, he fishes the 3 Mile PMD as a single fly to rising fish. He achieves a drag-free drift into the trout’s feeding lane, letting the built-in movement and motion of the CDC collar close the deal.

Now, I’m not saying that Shanafelt’s 3 Mile PMD is the only fly you should have in your PMD box. But I am saying you should tie some and give them a shot next time you encounter these irritating little bugs. It could turn out that for that day, it’s the one they’re looking for.

Shanafelt's 3 Mile PMD Recipe

• HOOK: #16 Tiemco 9300.
• THREAD: Fire Orange 14/0 Veevus or 30D Nano Silk.
• TAIL: Ringneck pheasant tail fibers.
• SHUCK: Olive Brown Z-Lon.
• RIB: Fine copper wire.
• ABDOMEN: Ringneck pheasant tail fibers.
• THORAX: Shrimp Pink Ice Dub.
• WING: White or light dun Poly Yarn.
• COLLAR: Light dun CDC.

Shanafelt's 3 Mile PMD Fly-Tying Tutorial

1. Start the thread at the 75 percent point and dress the shank to the bend. Tie in four evened strands of pheasant tail fibers at the bend so they extend about ¾ of a shank length beyond the hook. Wrap forward over the butt ends of the pheasant tail to the starting point and clip the excess.

2. Tie in a very sparse strand of Z-Lon at the starting point and, taking care to keep it atop the shank, wrap back over it to the base of the tail.

3. Clip the excess Z-Lon from the front of the tie-down. Then clip the butt ends at a slight angle to keep them ragged, just slightly longer than the pheasant tail fibers.

4. Return the thread to the starting point and tie in a piece of fine copper wire. Wrap over it to the bend, then return the thread to the starting point. Select four strands of pheasant tail, clip the tip ends square, and tie them in by their tips at the starting point. Wrap back over them to the bend. Return the thread to the starting point. You are making several “laps” up and down the hook, so be cognizant of keeping the thread wraps smooth and minimalist to reduce bulk.

5. Wrap the pheasant tail fibers forward, forming the abdomen. Tie off at the starting point, then counter-wrap the copper wire over the pheasant tail and tie this off at the front as well. Clip the excess pheasant and wire off flush.

6. Make a very thin noodle of Ice Dub and use it to build an oval thorax, taking care to leave about two eye lengths between the front of the thorax and the hook eye. Make a few wraps of thread behind the eye to form a base for the upcoming wing and hackle.

7. Tie in a thinned-down strand of Poly Yarn at the front edge of the thorax. Clip the front end short and at an angle to form a smooth transition. Trim the back end squarely across, even with the point on the barb.

8. Select a small CDC feather and prepare it by creating a separation point near the tip and stripping the excess fibers from the butt.

9. Tie in the CDC feather at the separation point at the base of the wing, with the inside of the feather facing the hook.

10. Fold the tip of the CDC feather back along the body of the fly and make a couple wraps over the fold to anchor it in place. Trim the center stem out of this folded-back tip section.

11. Lift the CDC feather upright and taut, then fold the fibers back toward the bend, as you would a soft-hackle feather.

12. Make two turns with the CDC feather traveling forward, then tie it off with a few very tight turns of thread. Clip the stem as close as possible, then build a smooth thread head over the butt end. Whip-finish and add a drop of head cement. If you have any obtrusively long CDC fibers dangling out there, you can reach in and break them off to a more suitable length—but don’t cut them all square with your scissors. The theme here is “ragged.”

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Charlie Craven co-owns Charlie’s Fly Box in Arvada, Colorado. He is the author of four books, most recently Tying Streamers: Essential Flies and Techniques for the Top Patterns (Stackpole Books, 2020).