Autumn On The EB

Autumn On The EB

Thursday, January 15, 2015

A Reliable Damsel Fly And Stonefly Pattern




I love damselflies and I don't want to be away from the Millers or the EB (especially the EB) during the first week of June and especially on a sunny warm day. You start seeing them crawling up on shoreline rocks around 9am and by noon there are tens of thousands in the air. They are a large insect and colored a nice light olive. This is much different than the nymph which looks like your standard drab dragonfly nymph. The adult is much larger than the nymph.

It's the nymph that interests the trout. These nymphs dart quickly towards the shore and you can see the trout chasing them in very shallow water. I once saw a brown beach itself on the island above the Kempfield Section on the Millers while chasing these nymphs. The far side of the EB's Bliss Pool is another good place.

Using small olive wooley buggers has been standard for years but the pictured pattern seems to work better. This stonefly that I developed is actually better suited for damsels because it can be tied smaller.

Hook - standard nymph in sizes 12-14
Tail - short thin strands of marabou. I've used brown, yellow (standard stonefly colors) and olive
Body - brown or dark fuzzy dubbing. I use Australian Possum.
Rib - very light gauge wire. Copper or gold will do
Wing Pad - I use dark turkey either tied folded over from the back or tied in at the front and clipped at the thorax.

Fish this fly quickly in short twitches and fish it along the shore.

Tie up a bunch of these. June is only five months away!!!!

Think Spring!

Ken

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the pattern Ken! Keep them coming.

Mike

Falsecast said...

Went the Fly Fishing Show in Marlborough yesterday. I thought it was well worth the $15. Lots of gear and fun stuff to check out while in dark days of Jan. You might want to check it out tomorrow, I believe it is the last day.

tincup said...

Just wondering. Ken is their anyway to pull up all your fly patterns on one link. I am sitting here at day 10 of a total hip replacement going to tie as many flies during my rehab as possible. Can only do so much sitting between rehab but really want to use this time efficiency.

Millers River Flyfisher said...

Tincup,

WTF!!! Get better soon. In the meantime just go to that little search bar on the upper left corner of my home page and enter the name of the fly from my list. Now, every post ever written with that fly mentioned will show up BUT the recipe post is usually near the top.

We will be ready for your comments on this blog this Spring.

Ken