Several decades ago I took a daylong seminar with Poul Jorgensen where he spent a lot of time helping us with the multiple, cut or burned, wing cases. Now I can’t even find recipes that invplve this technique. Has this gone out of popularity or am I missing something? Or are stoneflies more popular in the west than here in the northeast?
My take is that it is simply unnecessary, at least around here. Nymphs with simple wingcases or “in-the-round” with no wing cases are very effective. Stoneflies are often are found in currents where the trout don’t have time to count wingcases. Kaufmann stones are still very popular though(even with the extra wingcase).
I spent twenty years tying complicated stonefllies, then discovered that “rubberlegs” patterns are as effective, or maybe more, now I can give up on the fancy ones.
I use only the simple stone flies now too. Brooks stone and rubber legged style. If you want to use a simple wing case, I use swiss straw for the wing case.
I still like to make mine pretty so I will continue doing so. I will tell you that it does make a difference in small gin clear streams especially on in WV. Swiss straw is good stuff as I prefer that over the plastic.