The Partridge U.E. Long Mays is the pre-war ancestor of the entire Partridge mayfly hook tradition — a Size 6 Up Eye Long Mayfly hook preserved in its original cream paper packet with blue serif ink stamp, dating to the 1920s–1940s and predating by decades the alphanumeric coding system (D5B, K4A, G3A) that defines the modern Partridge catalogue. Its designation — “U.E. Long Mays” — is plain English in the pre-coding convention: “U.E.” for Up Eye, “Long Mays” for the hook’s single, specific, and seasonal purpose: the imitation of Ephemera danica, the Green Drake, on the English chalk streams during the fortnight of “Duffer’s Fortnight” that represented the apex of the British fly fishing year. The hook’s 4XL–5XL straight long shank — producing the highest shank-to-gap ratio (3.36:1) in the entire series — was engineered to replicate the natural’s elongated body without the additional complexity of detached body construction, offering chalk stream tyers of the Halfordian era a simpler path to anatomically proportioned E. danica imitations. The tapered up eye facilitates the Turle Knot that Halford prescribed for correct chalk stream dry fly presentation — on a shank of this length, the up eye is not merely traditional but mechanically essential, preventing the long shank from acting as a lever that tilts the fly nose-down under tippet tension. As the direct ancestor of the D5B (introduced 1980 as its explicit successor), the U.E. Long Mays completes the mayfly hook design genealogy documented across this reference series, spanning sixty years of Partridge production from paper packet to lime-green card. Together with the Up Eye Forged Short Shank in its companion paper packet, these two pre-war Partridge hooks form the most historically significant collecting pair in the entire series — the chalk stream and the North Country spider traditions in their earliest surviving physical form. The U.E. Long Mays rates 9.0/10 for collectability.
Made by Partridge of Redditch England
Partridge U.E. Long Mays – Additional Info
1. Identification
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Brand | Partridge of Redditch, England |
| Factory | Redditch, Worcestershire, England |
| Model/Code | U.E. Long Mays — Up Eye Long Mayfly Hook; pre-alphanumeric catalogue designation |
| U.E. Decoded | Up Eye — the eye orientation is spelled out in the product name in the plain-English convention of the pre-coding era |
| Size Documented | Size 6 |
| Estimated Era | c. 1920s – 1940s |
Era Reasoning: The packaging evidence for a pre-war or very early post-war dating is compelling on multiple grounds. The cream-coloured paper packet with blue serif ink stamp is closely related to the paper envelope format documented on the Up Eye Forged Short Shank hook in the preceding series entry — both representing the pre-cardboard, pre-blister-card era of Partridge retail presentation. The blue serif ink stamp on this example differs from the purple rubber-stamp of the Short Shank hook, which may indicate a slightly later or concurrent but distinct production run — blue ink stamps were common across the interwar period and into the early post-war years in the British light manufacturing trade. Critically, the designation “U.E. Long Mays” is plain English rather than an alphanumeric code, confirming pre-Bramley-era production before the systematic coding that gave the world K2B, G3A, CS2, and the rest. The page’s own assessment notes the 1920s as the probable era, though the broader range of 1920s–1940s better accounts for the possibility that this particular stamped format persisted through the interwar period and into the immediate post-war years before cardboard packaging became universal. Whatever the precise decade, this is firmly a pre-modern Partridge artefact — produced in the same workshop era as the Up Eye Forged Short Shank but for an entirely different and specifically seasonal application.
2. Technical Specifications
| Specification | Detail |
|---|---|
| Eye | Up Eye (U.E.) — tapered; the wire drawn to a taper before forming the upward-canted eye; the tapered formation keeps the eye profile minimal relative to the long shank’s visual mass; the up eye is specifically matched to the Turle Knot for correct fly attitude (see Historical Context) |
| Wire | Standard / Fine — for a hook of 4XL–5XL shank length, the wire gauge is kept as light as practical to minimise hook mass; on a very long-shank dry fly hook, the wire’s own weight constitutes a proportionally larger fraction of total hook mass than on a short-shank hook, making gauge selection critical for correct surface-film floatation |
| Shank | 4XL – 5XL Long Shank — the defining characteristic of the “Long Mays” designation; the shank is dramatically elongated to replicate the extended body of Ephemera danica without requiring a detached body construction; the shank measures approximately 8x the gape width, placing it firmly at the upper extreme of dry fly hook shank length |
| Bend | Round Bend with slight Limerick influence — a semi-round profile that transitions smoothly from the long straight shank; the bend is proportionally compact relative to the extreme shank length, maintaining a standard gape-to-shank ratio that keeps the hook in balance despite the long shank geometry |
| Finish | Bronzed — the standard Redditch bronze finish; oxidised steel with protective lacquer; particularly appropriate for surface-film dry fly hooks where low reflectance through the water surface is desirable |
| Forging | Standard — consistent with a fine-wire dry fly hook of this era; the long shank and light wire gauge do not benefit from the flat-forged treatment applied to shorter, heavier hooks like the Up Eye Forged Short Shank |
| Point | Needle point, inward-canted; on a hook of this shank length the point geometry is proportionally small relative to overall hook length, requiring careful formation to ensure adequate penetration |
| Barb | Prominent — moderately sized; a well-formed barb is important on a long-shank dry fly hook where the leverage advantage of a long shank can make hook retention more challenging than on a compact pattern |
3. Historical Context
The U.E. Long Mays in the Arc of Partridge Mayfly Hook History
The U.E. Long Mays occupies a uniquely important position in the Partridge mayfly hook genealogy — it is the direct ancestor of the D5B documented in the preceding series entry, and understanding the relationship between the two hooks reveals the evolution of British mayfly hook design across half a century.
Where the D5B (introduced 1980) was explicitly identified on its packaging as the successor to the “Long May” hooks, the U.E. Long Mays is the Long May tradition itself — predating the D5B by some fifty years and representing the form in which the “Long May” concept was sold to British chalk stream anglers during the interwar period. The progression is: U.E. Long Mays (1920s–1940s, paper packet, plain English name) → the intermediate “Long May” catalogue listings of the post-war period (cardboard box, still plain English) → D5B (1980, lime-green card, alphanumeric code, Captain Hamilton bend). The U.E. Long Mays is therefore not merely a collectable hook but a foundational document in the specific history of the British mayfly hook — the beginning of a design lineage that the D5B represents eighty years later in evolved and refined form.
The most significant design difference between the U.E. Long Mays and the D5B is the bend geometry: the Long Mays uses a round bend with a slight Limerick influence, while the D5B employs the Captain Hamilton wide-gape bend introduced in the interwar period specifically to improve hook-up rate on large mayfly patterns. The U.E. Long Mays therefore predates the Captain Hamilton collaboration — it represents the mayfly hook before Hamilton’s wide-gape refinement was incorporated, making it a document of how Partridge dressed E. danica imitations before the Hamilton improvement was available.
The “Duffer’s Fortnight” and the Chalk Stream Tradition
The Ephemera danica hatch — the Green Drake — has been the central event of the British chalk stream fly fishing calendar since chalk stream dry fly fishing was systematised by Frederic Halford and his circle in the 1880s and 1890s. Halford’s Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice (1889) and his subsequent volumes codified the chalk stream method during the same period that the U.E. Long Mays hook was being developed and refined in the Redditch workshops.
The “Duffer’s Fortnight” — the two to three weeks in May and early June when E. danica hatches on the Test, Itchen, Kennet, and other southern chalk streams — was named for the apparent ease with which trout could be caught when feeding freely on the large, conspicuous duns. But as previously noted in the D5B entry, the largest and most experienced fish quickly became selective during the mayfly hatch, demanding careful attention to fly size, silhouette, and correct drift. For these fish, the hook geometry mattered — a hook with insufficient shank length produced a body too short to match the natural’s elongated abdomen; a hook too heavy in the wire pulled the fly through the surface film. The U.E. Long Mays addressed both concerns directly: the extreme long shank provided authentic body proportions without resorting to the technically demanding detached-body construction, and the relatively fine wire for the hook’s scale kept total mass within the range manageable by a properly hackled dry fly.
The explicit design rationale documented on the page — that the extreme shank length was intended to replicate the natural’s body without a detached construction — is itself a revealing piece of tying history. Detached body mayfly patterns (in which cock or hen pheasant tail, polypropylene yarn, or similar materials are extended behind the hook bend to represent the abdomen of the natural) were known and practised by Halford and his contemporaries, but they required more advanced tying skill and produced flies more vulnerable to damage. The U.E. Long Mays offered a simpler solution that democratised the construction of proportionally authentic mayfly patterns — any competent tyer could dress a convincing E. danica imitation on the long shank without mastering the additional technique of detached body construction.
Halford, Skues, and the Up Eye Connection
Frederic M. Halford (1844–1914) was the founding systematiser of the chalk stream dry fly method and a close collaborator with hook manufacturers — including Redditch makers — in developing hooks specifically suited to the dry fly technique he was codifying. Halford’s insistence on the up eye for dry fly hooks was absolute: he argued, and demonstrated convincingly in his writings, that the Turle Knot on an up-eye hook produced a fly that sat correctly on the surface film with the hook shank horizontal and the tippet running straight back from the hook — the presentation that his carefully designed dry fly patterns required. The U.E. Long Mays, with its tapered up eye, is a hook that Halford would have recognised and approved as the correct tool for his large mayfly dressings.
G.E.M. Skues (1858–1949), whose campaign for nymph fishing on the chalk streams brought him into famous controversy with the Halford school, also relied on the up-eye, short-to-medium shank hook for his nymph and wet fly work — though on a different pattern from the Long Mays. The two men’s relationship with hook manufacturers during this period illustrates how actively the Redditch trade was engaged with the most prominent fly fishing thinkers of the era, responding to their published requirements and personal specifications with hooks like the U.E. Long Mays.
The Turle Knot and Up Eye Mechanics on a Long Shank
The Turle Knot’s specific advantages are amplified on a long-shank dry fly hook compared to their effect on a shorter hook, making the up-eye specification of the U.E. Long Mays particularly well-considered. On a standard-length dry fly hook, the difference between a Turle Knot on an up eye and a standard clinch or improved clinch on a down eye produces a subtle difference in fly attitude. On a 4XL–5XL long-shank hook, the same difference is magnified: a down-eye connection allows the long shank to act as a lever, causing the fly to tilt nose-down in the film under tippet tension, which rotates the extended body upward behind the fly and destroys the natural’s horizontal drift posture. An up-eye Turle Knot connection counteracts this lever effect, keeping the hook shank horizontal and allowing the extended body to lie correctly at or just above the film surface — replicating the natural E. danica dun’s posture with a fidelity that the down-eye alternative cannot match on a shank of this length.
This mechanical argument for the up eye on long-shank mayfly hooks was understood by the Halfordian school and acted upon in the hooks they specified. The U.E. Long Mays is the direct physical expression of that understanding.
The Paper Packet — Connecting Two Eras
The U.E. Long Mays and the Up Eye Forged Short Shank documented in the previous entry are the only two hooks in this entire reference series preserved in paper packet format — and together they constitute a paired historical document of Partridge production during its earliest known surviving commercial presentation. The blue serif ink stamp of the Long Mays and the purple rubber stamp of the Short Shank represent different ink-and-stamp choices within the same general paper-packet era, suggesting these hooks were packaged through related but not identical processes — possibly different departments, different years within the same production period, or different quality tiers receiving different stamping treatment.
For the collector building a comprehensive Partridge packaging typology — paper packets → beige-box-with-blue-label → lime-green card → yellow-box-with-red-logo → modern grey blister pack — the U.E. Long Mays and the Up Eye Forged Short Shank together represent the earliest surviving tier of that typology, making their co-existence in a single collection an extraordinarily compelling historical pairing.
Fun Fact
The size 6 specification of the U.E. Long Mays documented here is telling in its own right. Ephemera danica duns are large insects — body length 14–22mm, total wingspan up to 50mm — and a size 6 hook on a 4XL–5XL shank produces a fly with a body length that genuinely approximates the natural’s abdomen. Victorian and Edwardian chalk stream anglers who used these hooks were, in modern tying terms, working at what we would now call “realistic” imitation scale — a design philosophy that predates by decades the American “matching the hatch” movement that Swisher and Richards would articulate in Selective Trout (1971). The U.E. Long Mays is evidence that British chalk stream tyers were pursuing anatomically correct scale imitation of E. danica in the 1920s, working within a tradition that stretched back through Halford to the earliest systematic entomological fly dressers of the Victorian period.
4. Usage & Equivalents
Best Used For:
- European Green Drake (Ephemera danica and E. vulgata) Dry Fly Dressings — the specific and primary application for which the hook was designed; classic patterns include the Halford’s Green Drake, the Spent Gnat, the Hackle May, the Detached Badger, and the full canon of Victorian and Edwardian chalk stream mayfly dressings that require a long shank for authentic body proportions
- Large Mayfly Dun Imitations — any modern tyer wishing to dress an anatomically proportioned E. danica imitation without resorting to detached body construction; the 4XL–5XL shank provides the body length naturally within the traditional hook-dressed format
- Spent Gnat / Spent Spinner Patterns — for the evening spinner fall that follows the daytime dun hatch; the long shank provides the body length for the extended, flat-wing posture of the spent E. danica female
- Large North American Mayfly Species — Hexagenia limbata (Hex), Ephemera guttulata (Green Drake), Litobrancha recurvata (Brown Drake); all large enough to warrant the Long Mays’ shank length; North American tyers working on Hex patterns in particular will find the U.E. Long Mays producing a hook-dressed fly with more authentic body proportions than most modern long-shank hooks
- Dapping Flies — the traditional Irish and Scottish lough-style dapping application favoured large, buoyant flies presented on a blow-line or dapping rod; the U.E. Long Mays’ long shank and up eye suit this application well, and the Irish and Scottish lough tradition’s peak period coincides with this hook’s production era
- Extended Body Nymph Patterns — large stonefly (Pteronarcys, Acroneuria) and damselfly nymph imitations where the 4XL–5XL shank provides the body length required for correct proportions; an incidental application outside the hook’s primary dry fly purpose but exploitable in the modern tyer’s context
- Classic Long-Shank Wet Flies and Streamers — the long shank and up eye of a size 6 hook make it usable for some classic British lake fly and streamer applications, though this was not the hook’s intended use
Modern Equivalents:
| Modern Hook | Notes |
|---|---|
| Partridge D5B (previously documented) | The direct 1980 successor — shorter shank, Captain Hamilton bend, same up eye; the most historically connected modern substitute |
| Partridge Heritage Mayfly (L3A) | Current Partridge mayfly designation; the commercial continuation of the Long Mays tradition |
| Tiemco TMC 200R | Long curved shank, down eye — for extended body applications; lacks the up eye and straight shank of the Long Mays |
| Mustad 94720 | Long shank, standard wire, down eye — broad equivalent for large dry fly work; meaningfully different bend and eye orientation |
| Kamasan B800 | Long shank lure hook — much heavier wire, down eye; functional length equivalent only |
| Tiemco TMC 5212 | Long shank, up eye, fine wire — the closest premium modern equivalent in terms of up eye and long shank; lighter wire, different bend |
| Daiichi 1280 | Long shank, up eye, fine wire — Japanese premium equivalent; good functional match |
| Mustad 94831 | Long shank, up eye, fine wire — classic American equivalent; widely available |
Critical Note on True Long Mays Equivalents: No current production hook replicates the 4XL–5XL straight shank combined with the up eye, round/Limerick-influenced bend, and bronze finish of the U.E. Long Mays in its original specification. Modern “long shank” hooks have generally migrated to down eyes and slightly curved shanks (TMC 200R, Daiichi 1270), while up-eye long shank hooks in straight-shank format (TMC 5212, Mustad 94831) are lighter wire and shorter than the Long Mays maximum shank length. For tyers seeking anatomically proportioned E. danica dressings in the original Halfordian tradition, NOS U.E. Long Mays hooks offer a hook geometry and fly attitude that genuinely cannot be precisely replicated from current production.
5. Collectability
Collectability Rating: 9.0 / 10
| Factor | Assessment |
|---|---|
| Age and Historical Depth | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Pre-war or very early post-war production — among the oldest surviving Partridge commercial hook packages; pre-dates the entire Bramley-era catalogue system |
| Paper Packet Format | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The second documented paper-packet format hook in this series; cream paper with blue serif ink stamp is a specific and rare Partridge packaging variant |
| Chalk Stream Cultural Resonance | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The E. danica Green Drake hatch and the Halford/Skues chalk stream tradition are the most romantically charged context in all of British dry fly fishing history; a hook specifically designed for this tradition in this era carries exceptional cultural weight |
| Design Lineage Documentation | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The direct ancestor of the D5B — the U.E. Long Mays completes the genealogy of the Partridge mayfly hook tradition documented in this series; owning both hooks tells a design evolution story spanning ~60 years |
| Functional Specificity | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A 4XL–5XL up-eye long-shank round bend hook is a highly specific design with no precise modern equivalent; NOS examples have genuine functional value for serious E. danica tyers |
| Physical Rarity and Fragility | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Paper packet survival over 80–100+ years is extraordinary; intact, legible-stamp examples are exceptionally scarce |
| Companion Piece to Up Eye Forged Short Shank | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The two paper-packet hooks together form the most historically significant paired collecting unit in the series — the pre-war bookends of the Partridge range |
Why 9.0 — and why fractionally below the Up Eye Forged Short Shank’s 9.5?
The U.E. Long Mays achieves a score of 9.0, through a combination of extraordinary age, rare packaging format, deep chalk stream cultural resonance, and genuine functional irreplaceability that few hooks of any era can match. The half-point separation from the Up Eye Forged Short Shank (9.5) reflects two specific differences. First, the U.E. Long Mays appears to have been produced in somewhat larger quantities than the spider hook — mayfly hatches attracted enormous interest from chalk stream anglers throughout the interwar period, and “Long May” hooks were a significant seasonal commercial item; this slightly larger original production volume means proportionally more surviving examples than the more workmanlike spider hook. Second, while the chalk stream cultural association of the Long Mays is exceptionally rich, the Up Eye Forged Short Shank’s connection to the oldest school of British fly fishing (the North Country spider tradition, stretching back to the 15th century) represents a fractionally deeper historical root.
Ease of Finding: Very Difficult to Extremely Difficult. Like the Up Eye Forged Short Shank, intact paper-packet Long Mays hooks surface almost exclusively through estate clearances of deceased chalk stream anglers, dedicated specialist tackle auction sales, and the stock of the very small number of vintage fishing tackle dealers who actively source pre-war British hook packaging. The mayfly-specific application means these packets were used seasonally and over a short fishing window each year, which might have contributed to slightly better survival rates than the year-round spider hook — but the net effect is still an extremely rare item. The cream-and-blue stamp format is a specific and immediately recognisable collecting target for those who know what they are looking for.