I’m looking for a good still water adult stone fly pattern, which is not to difficult to tie. We don’t get many stone flies here in Australia, lately the lake I have been fishing has hatches of stone flies quiet regularly. They are quite small size 16-18 (some a lot larger but not many) and they are dark Grey in color. The parachute Adams is sometimes doing the trick on a few fish but refusals are more frequent. Thanks in advance,
Darren
Darren,
Here is a link about small Stonefly patterns; http://www.flyfishusa.com/flies/little-stones.htm
The Stimulator (Fly Of The Week) is a good pattern too.
Doug
The simplest and one of the most effective patterns for stoneflies are the North Country Spiders (Softhackles).
They can be fished as dries or semi-dries quite easily.
Here are some examples, you can easily adjust the colours, hackles and hook sizes to suit your particular stone fly.
They work well on the small lochs for the wild brownies here.
Blue Starling
Uses Brahma hen hackle.
Hi,
I’ve used a Doc Spratley for a small stonefly that I’ve seen on rivers here in New Zealand. I’ve only fished it wet, but it could be tied as a dry.
Here’s a wet fly version:
The pattern is:
tail: grizzel hackle
body: black seal fur (or wool)
rib: silver wire
wing: pheasant tail fibres
hackle: grizzle
head: peacock herl
If you break apart the fibres of the pheasant tail wing and tie it in like that of an elk hair caddis, then you have a good caddis immitation with the same pattern.
Here’s a dry version of a Doc Sprately that I tied up to see how they would look. I think this would do nicely as a stonefly. I used a smallish hackle so it would sit low in the surface film.
