A couple years ago, Tim Flagler of Tightline Productions showed us how to tie a Little Black Stonefly Nymph, and now he’s back with a cool dry-fly version of the same bug. When you’re out on the water in late winter/early spring, you’ll often find these little bugs on the snowy banks or in the stream. Fish the nymph until you see rises, but once the fish start coming to the surface, tie on one of these down-wing beauties and drift it in the film.
In the instructional video below, Tim walks you through the steps to tie this simple pattern, which features an ingenious winging technique to create a “wonder wing.” You’ll also learn how to make a cool, buggy body out of a single CDC feather.
Little Black Stonefly
Hook: Standard dry-fly hook, size 16.
Thread: Black, 8/0 or 70-denier.
Body: Slate gray CDC.
Wing: Coq de Leon soft hackle feather.
Hackle: Grizzly, timmed on bottom.
Head: Tying thread.
A fantastic little pattern! The effect is wonderful and will be a great addition to my fly box.
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Ed
Any recommendations to find these exact tying materials? I always struggle to find the right materials which kills my attempts to come close to the same beautiful patterns you achieve.
The clarity and quality of these tying videos inspires to work toward someday reaching that level. Great footage, thank you for sharing.
Bob Reece
http://www.facebook.com/ThinAirAngler
Phil, great post. I’ve been trying to work on a pattern for these lil stones but have not come up with anything like this beauty. Here in MN in the driftless I have seen these black stones crawling all over the snow in the past. I had to tie some up as soon as I got home from work, didn’t have any black or darker colored CDC or Coq de leon but substituted the fuz off the base a black cape feather for dubbing and used iridescent black mallard feather I believe I got off the breast (can’t remember) for the wing. The results… fishy looking enough! Thanks for the post.