Mailman Brown Drake

Mailman Brown Drakes

I still recall the take, the fish and the exact spot where I caught my first fish on the Mailman style Green drake pattern, which I wrote about here. It was memorable for a lot of reasons but on a day that began with fish hitting green drake duns with reckless abandon and transitioned to a more technical proposition, the Mailman pattern was the ticket in the end.

The takeaway from all this was that during the pre and post hatch times, I needed something more emerger or drowned adult style to cover my bases -- not a novel concept, I know, but a good reminder. The Mailman has a soft hackle appearance of sorts and is tied on a heavy enough hook to get it to sink below the surface to where fish are focusing efforts picking off emergers or adults that never got the chance to take off.

So I will fish this as a dropper from an adult pattern or just toss it solo at sub-surface feeding fish. Give it a try, it's a fun tie and fish seem to be keen on it.