The fly box · No. 12 of 36
Stimulator
Adult stoneflies first of all; in other colours and sizes, large sedges and grasshoppers.
- Kind
- Dry
- Hook sizes
- 8–14
- Season
- Spring, summer, autumn
- For
- Trout
- At the vice
- An involved tie
The dressing
| Hook | Long-shank dry fly with a gently curved shank, barbless or barb flattened, sizes 8–14 |
|---|---|
| Thread | Fluorescent fire orange, 6/0 (140 denier) |
| Tail | Light elk hair, short and slightly flared |
| Body | Yellow, orange or olive dubbing over the rear two thirds, palmered with a brown or furnace cock hackle |
| Rib | Fine gold wire, wound forward through the body hackle |
| Hackle | Grizzly cock, palmered through the thorax |
| Wing | Light elk hair, tied down-wing to the end of the tail |
| Also | Thorax of amber or orange dubbing; small head of the orange tying thread |
Tying it
- Tie in a short stacked bunch of elk hair for the tail, then the gold wire.
- Dub the abdomen over the rear two thirds of the shank.
- Tie in the brown hackle at the front of the abdomen and palmer it back to the tail.
- Catch the hackle tip with the wire, rib forward through the fibres and tie off.
- Tie in a stacked elk-hair wing reaching the tip of the tail and trim the butts close.
- Tie in the grizzly hackle, dub the thorax and palmer the hackle through it in three or four turns.
- Finish with a neat orange head and varnish.
Fishing it
Fast, broken water suits it best: the heads of pools, boulder runs and stony upland streams in spring when stoneflies are crawling out. Use 4X (0.18 mm) and short, accurate casts, letting it drift a little way and then giving it a slight twitch. It makes an excellent float for a weighted nymph on a dropper. On smooth chalk-stream glides it is usually too much fly; there, reach for something quieter.
Where it comes from
Usually credited to the Oregon tier Randall Kaufmann, who popularised it in the 1980s, the Stimulator belongs to a family of western American stonefly dries and its exact parentage is still argued over. Two hackles, an elk-hair tail and an elk-hair wing make it almost unsinkable. In yellow, orange or olive it suggests whatever large insect is clambering about the bankside.