This is a tough fly to see in the water. Spot where it lands, and follow the location during the drift. Tighten if you see a nose near the fly’s location.

CDC Rusty Spinner

CDC Rusty Spinner

• Hook: Dry Fly like Tiemco 100, size 14 to 20
• Tail: 3 splayed hackle fibers, or micro-fibbets
• Body: Turkey or Goose Biot, died rust (Turkey for larger sizes)
• Wing: CDC puffs, tied out to the side, topped with pearl Krystal Flash
• Thorax: Rusty dry fly dubbing

Dave Carpenter's Brown Wulff

Brown Wulff

• Hook: Standard Dry Fly hook like Mustad 94840
• Tail: Mallard Flank
• Body: Dark Brown Beaver
• Wing: Elk Hair, divided
• Hackle: Grizzly (optional Grizzly mixed with Ginger)

Tan Para Hopper

Tan Para Hopper

• Hook: 2x long dry fly hook like Tiemco 2312, size 6-12
• Body  & Thorax: Tan Superfine or other dry fly dubbing
• Wing: Turkey Tail treated with flexible cement
• Legs: Pheasant Tail fibers, knotted. (1 on each side)
• Parachute Post: White Poly Yarn
• Hackle: Grizzly Saddle Hackle

The Renegade

The Renegade

• Hook: Dry fly, sizes 12 to 20
• Tag: (optional) Gold Krystal Flash
• Rear Hackle: Brown Dry Fly hackle
• Body: Peacock (spun in dubbing loop for durability)
• Front Hackle: White Dry Fly hackle

Getting a bit bored with not catching fish with nymphs, I decided if I wasn’t catching fish, might was well do it with dries. A small yellow stimulator looked like it matched the bouncing flies. Casting to slicks and pockets, then: Wham! A foot-long rainbow nailed that fly.

Yellow Sally Adult. Photo from www.westfly.com

If you speak Latin, you may call it the Isoperla, but most call it the Yellow Sally or Little Yellow Stonefly. For patterns to match the adult, I think a yellow Elk Hair Caddis is fine, or even a pale olive. A small yellow stimulator is ideal, in the 16 to 14 size range.

Yellow Stimulator

Small Yellow Stimulator

• Hook: Tiemco 200R, size 16
• Tail: Blonde Elk hair
• Rib: Small copper wire
• Palmered body hackle: Brown saddle
• Body: Yellow Superfine
• Wing: Blonde Elk hair
• Front Hackle: Grizzly saddle
• Front body: Peacock

The yellow stimulator is close enough in most situations to the Yellow Sally, especially considering these flies are usually appear in faster waters with pockets – where the fish don’t get a lot of inspection time.

Close works with horseshoes and hand-grenades, but not when you are not catching fish. When not catching fish, I tend to doubt my fly selection, and want to get something that more closely matches the naturals.  This is where Yellow Sally specific patterns come into play.

What makes a Yellow Sally pattern is the red egg sac.

Yellow Sally Adult Fly Pattern

Yellow Sally Adult

• Hook: Timeco 100, size 14
• Egg Sac: Red thread, built up in a taper to match the body
• Tail: 3 fibers of dun hackle
• Body: Yellow rabbit dubbing or dubbing of your choice
• Wing: Blonde Elk Hair
• Thorax: Same yellow dubbing used on the body
• Hackle: Dun hackle, palmered stimulator style and clipped on the bottom

Yellow Sally Adult

Head-Light Yellow Sally

• Hook: Timeco 100R, size 14
• Body: Yellow thread
• Parachute: Calf hair (poly yarn would work also)
• Extended body: Yellow small ultra chennile, tip colored red with red Sharpie
• Underwing: few whips of long white CDC
• Wing: Synthetic wing material or Yellow goose feather supported with fleximent
• Hackle: Brown saddle

Elk Hair Yellow Sally

Elk Hair Yellow Sally

The Elk Hair Yellow Sally is essentially an Elk Hair Caddis, with an underbody/tag added of red 1mm craft foam. This gives a little more floatation & emulates the red egg sac.

• Hook: Tiemco 101BL, size 14
• Underbody/Tag: Red 1mm Craft Foam
• Hackle: Brown hackle, palmered and trimmed
• Body: Yellow Superfine
• Wing: Blonde Elk Hair
• Head: Yellow Superfine

Biggest pain the butt is knotting the legs.  I tried all the documented methods, but my finger dexterity just couldn’t get-er-done, until I settled on the following method. First, cut the fibers off the pheasant tail stem, then align the tips of the fibers. Use the larger butt-end of the fibers to make an overhand knot.

I just couldn’t get the hang of using hackle pliers, crochet tool, or hemostats to knot the legs on the stem.  Tying tip for today, don’t hack at it. just buy the legs pre-knotted.  For not much more money than the pheasant tail itself, you can buy pheasant tails, where someone with more dexterity pre-knotted the legs for you:

One such source is Riverwood Flies online.

Notes from the podcast:

• Besides vise, maybe the largest single investment in tying
• Two ways to purchase hackle, from necks or saddles – some info help make right choice for you
• Terminology:
  • Necks and Capes are the same thing. They come from the back of the neck.  Imagine if a redneck rooster was wearing a long mullet hair style; that would be the cape. Also, imagine the mane of a horse.
  • Saddle, from the back of chicken, like where a saddle would be if you saw a low budget sci-fi movie with a GI-Joe riding the chicken.
• Necks and Saddles are graded to help us make purchasing decisions (and the merchant make pricing decisions)
  • When buying, you will find the hackle graded with terms like: 1,2,3, ABC, Gold, Silver, Bronze
  • Grade is based on the quantity, quality, and size of the feathers.
  • The best value is in higher quality (more flies per $)
    • The only question, will you actually tie enough flies to invest in a high grade saddle?
• Advantage Neck
  • Necks have a wider variety of sizes, from 10 to 24. Plus a lot of left overs after the dry flies are tied:
    • Large hackles on the side, called spade, which have good fibers for tails
    • Woolly bugger hackle on back
    • Streamer wings
    • Stripped quills for bodies
• Counter-point Saddles
  • Saddles have longer feathers – many more flies per feather, but in a narrow range (3 sizes)
    • Ask the fly shop to inspect the saddle. Tell them which sizes you want to tie (ie. 12-16), and ask for a saddle that matches.  Don’t pick a random saddle.
    • For these sizes, you get a lot more flies worth.

• Dick Talleur did a study of capes & saddles in his book, Trout Flies for the 21st Century.  He counted each feather, grading the sizes, and tied a bunch of flies to see what each could tie:
  • Cape yielded approx 600 flies, with 220 left over feathers (tailing, streamer wings etc.) with sizes 10 down to 28
  • Saddle yielded approximately 1600 flies sizes 12 to 18, majority in 14 & 16
• Some recent prices for silver grade hackle: $80 retail for cape, $65 for saddle. So, if your in the market to tie a bunch of flies in a smaller range, the saddle is the way to go on a $/fly perspective.
• Still this is quite an investment. Especially if you are starting out and want several colors
• You can break this investment up into smaller amounts:
  • half saddles or half necks (even quarter saddles).  Many fly shops have a “starter neck” which is half brown and half grizzly.
  • Single size “100-packs”, which are enough saddle feather to tie 100 of the advertised sized flies
• An additional note about hackle, there have been lots of improvements over the past 20 years – breeding science & genetics applied to raising the chickens
  • The stems are thinner, feathers are longer, barbs are stiffer, making it easier to float your fly.
  • As a result, if you are following recipes from years ago, they may call for 2 to 4 feathers, with today’s necks, one feather needed (and sometimes you get more than 1 fly per feather)