Hi,
I plan to be fishing Salmonfly dries this June. Would like to see some of your favorite ties for this hatch.
Thanks,
Byron
This is my favorite one: TTFU…
Byron -
I use Stimulators that are very similar to your fly.
We have tons of Little Yellow Stoneflies that are also on the Yellowstone where I am during the same time as the Salmonflies so I mostly fish with yellow bodied Stimulators, but in sizes that are somewhere in between these 2 stonefly species (hook sizes #10 and #12). – the fish don’t seem to mind at all, and I catch a bunch of them fishing that way.
John
Lucky dog. I’ve only seen the bugs once and that was while hiking in YNP; never could get our kid’s schedules to coincide with my fishing plans. Hope you hit it right.
Regards,
Scott
If you are fishing where I think you are fishing, drop a Baetis emerger or Softhackle off that big dry fly. 
The big female’s (above) average 1-7/8" long. Most store-bought imitations are significantly shorter than the real bugs.
I’m not sure if size really matters, but that is how big they are.
During the hatch I fish the nymph as a dropper, hanging below the foam-bodied adult. One thing I learned from my long time fishing friend John Wilson (well known Missouri guide)–about the salmon fly hatch–is to fish caddis patterns in the evening. The nymphs are particularly effective in the morning. And big dry flies are fun to watch all day long (especially so if they have a nymph hanging off below). But the fish will often bite caddis in the evening, and hardly anybody fishes them then.
The last photo is a Boomerang Salmon fly. So named because the tippet goes through a tube or channel on the bottom of the fly. If you snag the hook the tippet breaks. And the fly drifts back to you, like an obedient Labrador retriever. If you want to use it as a bobber, you can loop the tippet up over the fly body, and then back through the tube again. Then you knot another tippet to the bend of the dangling hook. If you snag that rig you’ll lose the nymph. But you do still (most of the time) get the big foam bodied bobber fly back again.
One final note: big bushy elk hair wings (on salmon fly adults) are common. But they are wind resistant and hard to cast. If you make a more realistic, less prounounced wing (like the top photo in this post) then the fly is not only more realistic, but far easier to cast. And, unfortunately, damned hard to see. Even a big bug is hard to see if sits that low to the water. A tuft of white or hot pink yarn right behind the head (not shown in this case) fixes the visibility problem–from fly engineering 475–for graduating seniors?
… and friend on June 1 last year on the Lochsa just about a week before the runoff peaked …
… and the river was really ripping. Even near the edges the fishies had to come up a long way to grab a dry fly, and they came up regularly for this one.
Follow the link for some background and tying information. Since this article, I’ve gone to a darker FEB ( two dark brown antron strands and one orange ) and now use Montana Fly Co small speckled orange centipede legs for the antennae, legs, and tails.
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/fotw/2010/fotw20100607.php
John
Thanks guys!! Appreciate your help.
Byron
Dub, not going there as you don’t have much in the way of hatches in June which is the month I will be fishing. Change of plans. Back to Last Chance, Idaho again then.
I published this in Dick Stewart’s Fly Tyer in … 1986 I think.
http://montana-riverboats.com/index.php?fpage=Fly-Tying/Sandy-Pittendrigh/Bunyan-Bugger.htm
Enjoyed the article, Sandy.
Another good time to fish the big dries is starting a couple days after the hatch has petered out - the fish are getting hungry and are still looking up for big bugs.
You alluded to a similar approach with the suggestion of heading ten miles downstream of the head of the hatch to where the hatch has pretty much or has in fact ended.
John
The biggest trout I caught on a dry fly took a foam salmon fly adult. I was guiding a couple from Denver in the early 1990s, an emergency room doctor and his new wife of only a few months, who was a ski instructor. She’d never fished before. The Yellowstone was blown out so we went to the mouth of the canyon on the Gallatin. The salmon flies had been through maybe ten days before. The water was brown but fishable and still dangerously high.
I was trying to show her (Julie, I think) how to fish a foam adult with a big nymph trailing off the bend of dry fly hook. I made one cast right up against the bank. In shallow water. A half a second after the flies hit the water the adult disappeared with a sound like a brick hitting the water. The fish took off and then got his head stuck behind a rock, or so I thought–just like a rookie–because I flat out couldn’t move the fish. And then it took off. I was damn near spooled and the fish was already out in the middle of big heavy brown mid-river waves. I jumped in. Swam with one arm. Got maybe 150 yards down river and looked around. Julie was right behind me, breast stroking like the athlete she was, with a huge grin on her wet face. I worked the fish over to some shallow water. Measured him at 24". But length wasn’t the real story. That fish was hog fat. Looked like he had a softball buried in his gut. He was a hump shouldered male with a long snout and kipe.
I didn’t want to spoil the moment by complaining about no camera. When I let him go his teeth ripped my thumb like a straight razor. Julie said: “Oh my god. I do have a camera. Right here in my backpack.”
A moment after that Chuck Tuschmidt drifted by in a raft. Chucky still talks about that day. About finding us both soaking wet. Me with a blood streaming thumb and both of us grinning like we’d just won the lottery. I’ve caught bigger fish on streamers. But that was a lifetime best on a dry fly.
My favorite high floating salmonfly imitation is the Rogue Stone or a variation of it. it. 
Amy’s Ant - super easy to tie, floats all day, and catches fish like crazy on both the South Platte in Colorado and Lower, lower Hat Creek, in CA.
http://www.charliesflyboxinc.com/flybox/details.cfm?parentID=165
Parachute Madam X (PMX) - I have caught a LOT of fish during various stonefly hatches (golden, skwala, sallies) using various colors and sizes
http://www.charliesflyboxinc.com/flybox/details.cfm?parentID=101
Mike
Here is my favorite.
[u][b]Satsop Stone
[/b][/u]http://home.comcast.net/~rlonghunter/Satsop%20Stone.pdf
Some really nice patterns!! Thanks for showing them. What size are you folks tying on?
Thanks!
Byron,
#10 through #6 is what I’ve stuck with for the Satsop.