Danny, Champion of the World … and the Gallic Nymph 🐓
Don't Tell Danny's Dad!
Morning,
Today's email missive is all about a very special Gallic Nymph, which ties quite neatly into a story from my long-lost youth!
When Stan (of Nymphèvolution fame) sent us his stunning WFX Nymphs last month, he also included a few goodies as samples - to entice us to order again, it always works.
One of the nymphs he included was a classic Pheasant Tail Nymph, but with a very French twist ... which struck a very personal chord with me.
Back in the late 1970s, "Danny, Champion of the World" was one of those books I read until the spine gave up and the pages fell out - in fact - inspired by these flies, I even revisited the book last week, and it was still just as good as I remembered it.
On seeing Stan's sample patterns, memories of Roald Dahl’s tale of Danny and his ingenious father, sneaking into the woods to outwit pheasants, came flooding back to me:
"In Dahl’s woods, pheasants tumbled from the trees, powerless to resist temptation. On our rivers, trout do much the same when faced with a pheasant tail nymph."
It has since amused me that the same pheasant feathers which made Dahl’s birds so prized by poachers also make some of the most effective nymphs in fly fishing.
If only Danny’s dad had known - those pheasants were worth more tied to a hook than roasted on a spit!
Fast forward to today, and pheasant tail fibres remain one of the most important materials in fly tying.
Why?
Because they’re:
Natural & Convincing – Their brown-olive hues with flashes of green and copper perfectly match baetis nymphs, the trout’s year-round staple.
Slim & Tapered – Pheasant tail fibres wrap into bodies that are slender, segmented, and life-like.
Suggestive & Alive – In the current, pheasant tail fibres shimmer and quiver, giving trout that final nudge to eat.
Timeless – Frank Sawyer’s Pheasant Tail Nymph, first tied in the 1950s (see below), still catches fish worldwide — and almost every modern nymph owes it a debt.
Which brings me neatly to Stan's own Gallic Pheasant Tail Nymphs. These are elegant, precise, and just buggy enough to fool even the wiliest of trout. They’re faithful to the Sawyer tradition, but with that Gallic flair - slimmer, sharper, and beautifully finished on a Hends BL454 size 16 barbless hook:
Let me introduce you to Stan's Gallic Pheasant Tail Nymph Selection which includes 3 different colour variations:
Black
Dark Red; and
White
With this selection of Stan's Gallic Pheasant Tail Nymphs, you will be able to provide a very passable imitation for virtually any nymph found in UK waters.
"Danny’s pheasants were the prize of the poacher’s world. Ours are the prize of the angler’s box — slim fibres that still fool fish seventy years after Sawyer tied the first one."
"Where Dahl told of pheasants in the trees, Sawyer told of pheasant tails in the current. Different stories, same bird, same magic."
This nymph imitation is ideally used as a dropper fly in any nymphing setup (and great for sight nymphing in slower flows). Don't forget about using these on stillwaters also - a figure-of-eight retrieve on a floating line keeps them moving naturally. These imitations are all tied on size 16 barbless Hends BL454 hooks.
The tying specification for these Gallic PT Nymphs is:
Fly Name: Gallic Pheasant Tail Nymph
Hook: Hends BL454 N°16 Barbless Wet (2x Strong)
Head Composition: 2mm Coloured Glass Bead
Body Composition: Specially Selected French Pheasant Tails
Body Rib: 0.1mm Copper Wire
Latin Name: Baetis
Weight: Light - 0.04g
Please Note: As usual with both Stan's and our Bosnian flies, we never have loads of them - we've only 50 of these selections available. We did receive more, but I'm stashing away a few selections for myself to last me through Autumn and early Winter - I'm looking forward to trying the white-beaded ones on my local Grayling population - they seem to have a preference for white.
We are only making these flies available as a selection of 9 (three of each colour) - just click on any of the fly images or buttons below to view more detailed images of each individual nymph. This selection of 9 nymphs is priced at £20.00 (which includes FREE delivery to anywhere in the UK) - we do understand these are at the pricier end of the spectrum for flies, but the quality is truly outstanding.
We only have 50 selections available for sale - I'm keeping some to use myself! So you will need to be quick!
*** Go on, you know you want to ***
These are one of the most common nymphs found in virtually all waters. They are found on rocks, sand and all types of gravel, so Stan (inspired by Frank Sawyer) decided to try and make an imitation as realistic as he could.
These nymphs are tied as a general representation of the nymphs commonly seen on our riverbeds.
We only have 50 selections available for sale - So you will need to be quick!
*** Go on, you know you want to ***
1. Go Upstream - On rivers, fish them upstream with a dead drift. The slim profile slips naturally into the flow.
2. Use a Long Leader - 12–15ft with 6X or 7X tippet gives you delicacy and avoids spooking fish in clear water.
3. A Bead for Depth - In deeper glides or stillwaters, this glass bead-headed version helps the fly sink steadily into the feeding zone.
4. Try a Team - Pair one of Stan's Gallic Pheasant Tail nymphs with a heavier fly as an anchor below — allowing you to cover multiple depths at once.
5. Work the Lift - At the end of a drift, raise the rod tip slowly — trout often pounce as the nymph “emerges.”
6. Don’t Forget Stillwaters - Figure-of-eight retrieves on a floating line keep them moving naturally. They’re not just for rivers!
7. Target the Margins - Fish patrol weed beds and edges for nymphs dislodged from the weeds — a pheasant tail here is deadly.
7½. Believe in the Simplicity - It doesn’t need to be fancy. A pheasant tail nymph works because it looks right. Fish it with confidence.
In the 1950s, on the banks of the River Avon, a Wiltshire riverkeeper named Frank Sawyer set out to solve a problem. Trout and grayling were feeding heavily on slim, dark olive nymphs — but none of the bulky patterns of the day looked right, let alone fooled the fish.
Sawyer’s answer was as simple as it was revolutionary: he stripped a few fibres from the tail of a cock pheasant, wound them directly onto the hook shank, and ribbed them with fine copper wire for strength and weight. The result was the Pheasant Tail Nymph — slim, tapered, and astonishingly lifelike. It looked like everything and nothing all at once, which is exactly what made it so convincing.
The Heritage of the Pheasant Tail Nymph
The genius of Sawyer’s invention was in its simplicity. No thread. No hackle. Just natural fibres in natural colours, forming a profile trout instantly recognised as food. The subtle iridescence of pheasant tail — browns, olives, and flashes of green — mimicked baetis nymphs, the backbone of a trout’s diet across the UK.
Over seventy years later, the Pheasant Tail remains one of the most fished, most copied, and most successful nymphs in the world. Almost every modern nymph owes something to Sawyer’s original design — whether in body material, silhouette, or philosophy.
From chalkstreams to stillwaters, Yorkshire becks to Welsh rivers, the pheasant tail continues to prove what Sawyer knew all along: sometimes the simplest ideas are the best.
Next time you’re on the water, spare a thought for Danny and his pheasants. Poached or not, pheasants have always been champions of the fly angler’s world.
With one of Stan's Gallic Pheasant Tailed Nymphs on your cast, you might just feel like a champion yourself.
Tight lines.
