EARLY SEASON DRY FLIES

Adult Needle Fly

Stoneflies
Small stoneflies are also coming off at this time of the year and are commonly known as needle flies, which is an old English term. These are small, long, skinny-looking bugs. Stoneflies tend to hatch out just on daylight, climbing up on obstacles or boulders and resting on the upstream side, which is generally facing east so that it can catch the morning sun.

Stonefly nymph family - Gripopterygidae

Stonefly Shucks

Around lunchtime, the females will climb back into the water to lay their eggs and you often see them flying off after doing so at the tail end of broken water. The best time to try stoneflies is, tongue-in-cheek, anytime, with a preference for early morning and midday.

Don't be put off by the size of this fly, it is actually tied on a size 16 hook and the wing case is a goose biot fibre.

This pattern was developed over ten years ago and it was named after the wife of the great American fly fisher, Jeff Currier, who stayed at my place in the latter half of the 1990s. We were lunching at Tumbling Waters on the Rubicon River when these little black needle flies started to land on us and the table we were eating from. We looked just up from where we were sitting and we could see them periodically coming off just below a riffle section.

I tied some up and it was Jeff's wife, who he calls Granny, who caught all of the fish on this pattern. The original did not have rubber legs or the wing case, that has been a later addition to the fly.

The male spinner of the Baetid tan-eyed blue dun.
Note the blue dun colour of the legs on both
the dun and the spinner.

The Black Granny Stone

The Granny Stone
As designed by Mick Hall

Hook: Partridge DHT Dry Fly
Size: 16
Thread: Black Spirit River Super Thread 12/0
Body: A sliver of black foam cut like an elongated triangle
Wing: Dark brown or black goose biot tied flat over body
Post: Butt section of the foam body
Legs: Spirit River Black Mini Round Rubber Leg
Thorax: Black or peacock Spirit River Diamond Brite dubbing
Hackle: White Farms Black Cock Saddle.

Other patterns worth trying are:
Crane flies (watch this space as a profile article is in preparation).
Black Dung Beetles (see article, Early Season Backwater Flies) start to emerge from August on.
Some caddis are also active from late August depending on the season;
see article, Emerging Caddis.

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