It has been a while since my last post, so I figured I would start updating you on my latest creations. Since winter set in, I have been refilling my fly boxes that had become greatly diminished throughout the summer and fall due to the many trips around the state. Alyssa and I visited the Taylor where we spent some time hooking up with several nice rainbows and browns. We also fished the Big Thompson, the South Platte, Clear Creek, and Bear Creek. These are all great areas here in Colorado! However; let’s not forget our time meandering through the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee where the fish may not have been monsters, but the tranquility and solitude that the area provided more than made up for the lack of trophy trout available for us. Overall it was a great season!
Let’s see… While tying a few hoppers, I realized that I had never tied any salmon flies and this is odd because it is a hatch that I love to fish. When these bugs are on, the river comes alive with activity and you feel almost as if you are in a Wild West shoot out as you cast toward so many aggressively feeding trout. The pattern that I started working on is called the Rogue Stone. This is a great fly to fish and it follows my theme of practicing more extended body patterns.
This pattern was originally created by Jack Schlotter as a durable imitation of the black stone flies he witnessed in his local town of Medford, Oregon. There are many different adaptations to this pattern, but some of the most recent that I have fished actually alter the wing to look more damaged or splayed adding to the realism. After all, stone flies don’t often land on the surface of the river with their wings perfectly folded, but rather they appear spread out and sometimes even stuck within the surface film. Add a little color variation and blacken the last segment to imitate a cluster of eggs and you have a fly that will reap havoc anywhere salmon flies are being targeted.
