Drone Stone

Fly Patterns
1

My latest fly is the woven body stone fly, the Drone Stone:

2

Good looking stone fly, Silver.

Found a neat video on weaving while looking for more information on the Drone Stone, but didn’t find anything in the way of materials, recipe, tying sequence, etc. for it.

Do you have a reference / link for tying the Drone Stone ??

Thanks.

John

P.S. Here’s a link to one approach to woven bodies. It is one of the simpler ones I’ve seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=7059YkpEwuc

3

… a good reason to do woven body stone fly nymphs.

Golden stone top.

Golden stone bottom.

The difference in coloration top to bottom is not usually so pronounced. It is my impression that the more pronounced underside is a sign that the nymph has recently molted. And it is also my impression that the trouts really like the recently molted, more tender nymphs. Can’t remember where I picked that up, but it was from a credible source or I wouldn’t have bothered to remember it. :shock:

John

4

The pattern is in the Autumn 2010 Fly Tyer magazine by Aaron Jasper. I tie it the same way Aaron does using bobbins but I use embroidery floss rather than fly tying floss. It is cheap and comes in all the colors you would ever want at about 39 cents a skein.

Tying instructions:

  1. Put bead on hook and clamp hook in vise.

  2. Move bead to back of hook. Lay a thread base using Uni Stretch Thread (this is a stretchable tying thread needed to cover the lead wire) and move thread to the front and tie rubber antennae on behind the eye. Whip finish tread or tie two half hitches and cut off thread. Slide bead over the antennae butts.

  3. Remount thread and tie in rear rubber tails. Then tie copper ribbing wire to the far side of the rubber tails. Keep thread to the rear.

  4. Crimp lead wire to flatten and thin it and begin winding lead wire from rear to the front. Crimped lead forms a rear taper to the lead underbody. Depending on diameter of lead wire and hook size, a second row of lead may be needed to build up body. Make sure the lead under body maintains the tapered shape. Cover lead wire with Uni Stretch to form a smooth underbody. You may choose to do this step with dental floss or other floss if you don’t have Uni Stretch tying thread.

  5. Tie in the two colors of embroidery floss, on on each side of the body. Form a smooth underbody of Uni Stretch, tie off and cut off the thread. Weave the body 2/3 of the way to the hook eye, remount tying thread, wrap the ends of the embroidery floss, and cut off the floss.

  6. Wind copper wire around the woven body, cut off and wrap end with tying thread.

  7. Woven abdomen will be about 1/2 of the body. Tie in the wing pad material facing the rear of the fly (I used brown Swiss straw) and tie it down up to the 1/2 point.

  8. Tie in the rear rubber legs on each side and tie them down rear to front along the sides up to the back of the bead.

  9. Return thread to the back of the thorax and dub and wind forward about half of the thorax. Fold swiss straw forward over the dubbed section and tie down and go forward another few wraps. Fold swiss backwards over itself and tie down. Swiss Straw is now towards the rear of the hook again.

  10. Dub and wind over the tied down section of swiss straw, and then dub forward to the back of the bead. Fold swiss straw forward to form the forward wing case. Tie down swiss straw with 2 thread wraps, cut off swiss straw and finish the tie off with a 5 turn whip finish.

Instead of swiss straw, other wing case material such as turkey tail, or cut thin skin can be used. For me the swiss straw is faster. If you use other materials to form individual wing pads, the tying instructions change to accommodate the different construction method of tying down the pads over the dubbed thorax instead of folding the material to form pads with swiss straw.

Here’s another weaving video by Aaron.

Weaving Flies - August 2009 TPO Tip of the Month - YouTube

The online patterns are below but the article is and the instructions above more complete.

The TPO “Dronestone”

Drone Stone - NGTO Message Board

Black Drone Stone - NGTO Message Board

5

So, John, how long did it take to train that golden stone to roll over and play dead?

6

It’s been a while, but my best recollection is the training took about 1.7361 seconds, plus a couple seconds to take the pix, and he was back in the water swimming home to his rock in the South Fork of the Snake.

7

Cool fly. going to check out the videos over the weekend.

8

Nice job on the tying sequence, Silver. Thanks.

It would make an excellent FOTW article.

John