Regardless of whether you’ve been fly fishing for trout for 40 years or started a week ago, odds are at some point a Prince Nymph has been somewhere in your fly box. These versatile and adaptable patterns have been used for decades to imitate all types of life rolling along the bottom of streams worldwide.
Contrary to popular belief, the pattern is not named for a member of the royal family or the late pop-singer, but for Doug Prince of Monterrey, California. Doug developed what he called the Brown Fork Tail Nymph, sometime in the 1940s while tying commercially for Buz Buszek. Buz wanted to add the peacock bodied fly to his catalog but couldn’t recall the name Doug had given it, so he christened it the Prince Nymph, and the rest is history.
Tied as big as size 6 and as about as small as you can get, the Prince fly design has been used countless times to developed new patterns like the Psycho Prince Nymph and the Nymph formerly known as Prince.
How to Tie the Prince Nymph
Materials:
Tail: Turkey Biots
Body: Peacock Herl
Body wrap: Gold wire (Sz. Small)
Collar: Hackle tips
Wing: White Turkey Biots
