Last week I posted regarding a new golden stone pattern that I had tied, and planned to name in honor of a friend if it fished. Follow the link to the previous thread.
It fishes. Fished it for a while today on the Lochsa River. Kept the fly that took the first cutt and will send it to my friend later in the week. Took four or five more cutts and bows with another fly in fairly short order, even though it was a rather slow day. Lost that fly and decided to go to another pattern.
The fly has earned the right to be named for and dedicated to my good friend Liz, and will henceforth be called “Lizzie’s Stone.”
I’ve never tied up any of your flies that DIDN’T work for catching!! Anxious to try this one, too. The Henry Forks caddis adaption is my go to fly in SD.
I went exploring today expecting to try the North Fork of the Clearwater and maybe Kelly Creek. Came to a bridge crossing a small tributary to the N.F.C. The sign read - ELIZABETH CREEK.
I KID YOU NOT !!
Spent a couple hours fishing “Lizzie’s Stone” on the North Fork and on Elizabeth Creek. Long story ( see my post today on “Some Time in the Mountains” thread on the Fishing Reports Forum ) short. Caught about thirteen cutts and bows on the Creek and a half dozen fishies in the River with Lizzie’s Stone. Also turned a good number of fish - hits and refusals and all that. Lots of action in a fairly short time. THAT is what I was expecting of this fly.
I did make a couple changes to the original. I eliminated the peacock herl as a mostly cosmetic thing. May tie the fly with the peacock or not in the future, depending on my mood at the time.
The other change was more substantial. The original fly wanted to propeller, probably due to the way the hackle was tied in and wrapped. Looked good, but maybe not the best technique ?? Decided to tie in the hackle a couple eye widths behind the eye, hackle back to the deer hair tie in point, and then hackle forward to just behind the eye and tie it off. That change did seem to eliminate the propeller effect.
Fished the same fly for the best part of a couple hours and landed somewhere around nineteen fishies. It was still floating well just before I stuck it in an evergreen by keeping my backcast uppeth, way uppeth.
More effective, simpler, and definitely durable. It fishes, and my friend Liz fishes, too !!
Just wanted to say thanks for all the great posts. I really like your Lizzie’s stone pattern. Just wondering if you wouldn’t mind showing a pic of the modifications you made.
Thanks.
Thanks for these posts John. I’ve finally tried furling a mix of my onion and grass stained wool and produced an acceptable extended body. I don’t have any dry fly hackle with me, so this was more to just try out the technique. I just dubbed over the tie on thread with a similar wool mix, and then added a bit of hare’s mask for a thorax. Hackle was just a reddish brown strung hackle, tied sloping back wet fly style. I didn’t have the clips, so just held one end of the wool and used a standard pair of hackle pliers on the other to spin the strands. Once done, just clipped it all into the hackle pliers to hold it all in place before tying in. When I get back to NZ I’ll definately be tying up a few mayfly dries this way. Thanks again for bringing upthis technique.
I plan on submitting Lizzie’s Stone as a Fly of the Week candidate in the next few days. That submission will show the final tying sequence, maybe one pic with and one without the peacock herl, which really is optional. I think with the “back and then forward” hackling technique the herl wouldn’t show anyway, and would just add weight to the fly.
If the fly isn’t accepted as a FOTW, I’ll post some pics on this thread.
The first FEB fly that I came up with was a Western Green Drake. To take a step back to that fly, and a step forward, there is a way of incorporating tying thread into the furled body, which tying thread can be used to secure the tails to the FEB.
Hey John, I think it would be a great post for the fly of the week. I’m glad you thought of it. This way it won’t get lost in cyberspace and people will be able to find it each year when tying up a new set of flies each season.
Since Jeff brought it up it maybe should be pointed out there are many ways to do the twisting/furling.
E.G. I place one end of the material strand in the vise jaw…grab the other end with a hackle pliers…twist/spin the pliers [nice if it has a little weight]…when twist is where I want it I hook the strand with a dubbing twister [Shepard’s hook style] at the level I want…fold the pliers end up to the end in the vise and proceed to furl…remove from the vise…and have your way with it.
I might mention if I want to use some of the material to wrap some body on the hook after tying the furl in… I just leave some extending out of the vise jaw before twisting…it doesn’t get twisted.
