I spent most of last night trying to tie stone fly nymphs. I watched a few different videos and tried to put my own spin on it. The problem I often ran into was the backing. The abdomen was great. I used of course goose biots for the tail and antennae, and dubbed both olive rams on some and golden ginger dubbing on others. I used turkey feather on some backs and dyed black goose feather on others and a super fine brown wire for ribbing.

I used lead free wire and in some cases 2 3/16th bead heads in the body. Overall I would call the experience a success, as I do believe they might trigger a fish to bite, but the wing casings or what ever they are, the pair of "flaps" on the back of the thorax that fold back towards the rear, always got screwed up on me. When I folded them back and tied them off they were fine but when I tried to cut them off with that tell tall inward point, they sort of frayed and the feather fibers didn't stick together anymore. making it no where near as clean as I'd hoped. I know they can be made this way as I have seen them and own some tied in this fashion.

I concluded in some of the earlier attempts that the two beads were too much and didn't give me quite enough to tie to. Although honestly in retrospect, I wonder... Had I dubbed the heck out of the beads and covered them over, would the surface wider than a hook shank allowed me to tie off the feather material and not cinch it to the point that the fibers separated?

Does anyone have any ideas? I am tempted to buy some of that thin skin material that looks like a turkey feather print and use that as I saw in a video, but since I had turkey and goose feathers I tried to make it work with what I had.

I'll try to get some pics up later.

Also what patterns do others use to replicate this insect?

Thanks.

Thanks Dave!  I have some hard as nails sally hanson stuff that Stephen turned me on to not long ago.  I could try that.  But I picked up a few things this am.  That latex skin that looks like mottled turkey feather, and straw in dark brown if I can't seem to get the turkey feather working good.

I'm about to give it a go here.

Thanks,

Theron