Whiskey Creek Fly Fishing » Stimulator http://wcflies.com/blog Thoughts on fly fishing and fly tying Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:22:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Sofa Pillows, Stimulators, and Such http://wcflies.com/blog/2009/03/sofa-pillows-stimulators-and-such/ http://wcflies.com/blog/2009/03/sofa-pillows-stimulators-and-such/#comments Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:40:56 +0000 WhiskeyCreek http://wcflies.com/blog/?p=280 The sofa-pillow is one of the first stone-fly patterns. Created by Pat Barnes in West Yellowstone, the story goes that a bunch of fishermen were visiting from Texas. The lone-star fishermen were having difficulty fishing small flies. So, Pat took out some streamer hooks and created large, bushy, easy to see fly. The name came from an exclamation that the fly is as large as a sofa pillow.

(photo from Fly Anglers Online)

As time went on, Pat improved the sofa pillow, adding a deer hair tail, palmered body hackle, and deer hair wing instead of the squirrel. Lots of imagination went behind the new name, Improved Sofa Pillow.

The next evolution went, strangely, east.  Jim Slatterty, a fly tyer and punk-musician in New Jersey tied this fly to simulate a fluttering stonefly. He named it the Stimulator. He added the deer hair wing (parallel development?), the dubbed front half, which gives another opportunity to add color, and the more sparsely hackled thorax/front half.

The Stimulator was made popular in the west by Randall Kaufmann.


(Photo from TroutFlies tutorial)

Why the history lesson?  I’ve been experimenting with these patterns for a stone-fly pattern to try out this spring.  Check this space tomorrow for the new pattern.

]]> http://wcflies.com/blog/2009/03/sofa-pillows-stimulators-and-such/feed/ 2 A Girl’s Secret http://wcflies.com/blog/2008/12/a-girls-secret/ http://wcflies.com/blog/2008/12/a-girls-secret/#comments Sat, 20 Dec 2008 06:03:53 +0000 WhiskeyCreek http://wcflies.com/blog/?p=150 What a find!

Tonight, my wife and I were Christmas shopping for our daughters. This was the clothes and accessories phase of the gift search.  My shoulders slumped as we walked into another girly store, Claire’s. My eyes wandered around the store, past the hair bands, past the ear-rings, paused briefly on the pink feather boas, then zeroed in on the fly tying find of the week: A Girl’s Secret, Sporty Girl Foam Wrap.

30 yard rolls of .5mm Polyurethane Foam, 2.5 inches wide.  $4 per roll, second one is 50% off.  Yellow and Orange (and green, blue, red, purple, and yes, pink).

Sporty Girl Foam

Sporty Girl Foam

Sporty Girl Foam stimulator:

  • Hook: Tiemco 200R
  • Thread: Yellow 6/0
  • Tail: Deer Hair
  • Hackle: Medium Dun
  • Body: Orange Sporty Girl Foam
  • Wing: Deer Hair
  • Front Hackle: Grizzly
  • Front Body: Yellow Sporty Girl Foam
Sporty Girl Foam Stimulator
Sporty Girl Foam Stimulator

Sporty Girl foam is available at Amazon.com

]]> http://wcflies.com/blog/2008/12/a-girls-secret/feed/ 9