Fly tying shops are selling a promising new plastic sheet material named “UV Chewy Skin” for $5.50 or so per 2" x 5" rectangle.
The Troutfitters shop in Bozeman MT can’t keep it on the racks. Local tiers cut it into variable width strips to make San Juan-like worms and Crayfish and scud backs. The one big drawback is the price. It sure isn’t cheap.
For about $3.50 I can buy a sack full of bass fisherman’s skirted tubes that represent 2 or 3 times that many square inches of gooey-soft multi-colored sheet material. This stonelfy nymph was snipped out of a Berkeley Pumkinseed Powertube. Works too. Damn good fly. I used it to tie both of the flies below.
Recipe:
body bottom: open cell mattress foam…not much. Just a thin sliver
body top: a long triangle snipped out of a power tube
legs: rubber legs
hook: scud hook
glue: CA glue
You would need two needles. One is any wide-eyed sewing needle whose eye has been made wider. Use a cigarette lighter, pliers and another needle to widen the eye. Then you can use it to sew rubberlegs into the body. The other needle is an ultra-thin #13 beading needle. Put that in the vise horizontally and then make the body, without any hook at first. Skewer the foam onto the needle. Sandwich two end-to-end rubberlegs between the foam and the rubber skin. Lash it onto the needle, segmenting the body as you go. Whip finish up front. Slide the modular body off the beading needle. Now put a scud hook in the vise upside down. Wrap the shank. Lash on the body, so the hook points up. Sew in two more rubberlegs. Now soak the top of the fly with a drop of CA glue, so the hook won’t spin.
CA glue adheres to some plastics and not at all to others. CA glue does make a ferocious grip to plastic tubing material, for what ever reason.
You can also sandwich a bit of flattened lead into the thorax area, which forces the hook to always ride up.
The needle body technique is flexible and handy. Variations on the tying steps described above can also be used to make flies like the following, which use (mostly) natural materials:
This mayfly (tied on a #20 scud hook) could be made with a duck flank wing, instead of Zelon. The body is no more than a clump
of duck flank fibers wrapped onto a needle. As a last step, the abdomen is wetted down with thinned-out
water-based fabric cement, which keeps it from unravelling, and yet still soft and flexible.
This ultra-flexible, nylon-mesh-base (spawn sack) sculpin is tied around a snelled hook. But the only practical way to do that is
to tie on top of a long skinny needle, or on a thin wire stretched between two vises.
Ok, I like the fly, but I have a concern. I know that some of the places that I have fished have very strict regs on soft plastics as well as on scented/flavored baits. Your stonefly has both of the characteristics. Berkley’s powerbait line is all scent/flavor enhanced baits. Of course, if that were not a legal concern where you are then i think your stone would offer a SIGNIFICANT advantage over other imitations as fish tend to hold powerbait much much longer than they do non flavored baits.
Fish
DISCLAIMER: I am not a purist, nor do I aspire to become one. My above concern was only with the legal implications of using this material to tie flies with. I believe that ethical practice is up to each person to decide for themselves and should not be imposed by others. Hell, I even eat a trout now and then…
I agree with Betty - I can’t even see the hook on that second pic. Hows bout the recipe for it or are you going to feature it as a FOTW? or FOTC (C = Century!) What did you use for the antennae on it? LOL! LOL!!
Well I’m with you there.
Some rules are well taken and need to be obeyed, like no empty beer cans left behind. And no thousands-of-years dangerous nuclear waste left behind either. Ooops. That one’s not a rule and it should be.
One rule we have here in Montana (that I don’t much like) is a limitation of two hooks (no more than two flies) at a time. A cast of three wet flies was a long standing tradition around here. I often fish three flies–at least when no one is looking anyway. If I lived in a place where weight on the leader wasn’t allowed I’d get creative with spark plug patterns…which I hear are popular in places like that. I like to live by my own well-considered rules. And do too for the most part.
It’s amazing what can be done with bug skin, rubber bands and a Sharpie!! Plus it looks like he took it to the next level of C&R, because not only does it look barbless - it looks hookless!! LOL!! Just funnin ya here Mr. pittendrigh tis all!!! Please fell free to report me as spam, and not the canned stuff either!
