Stimulators 04/03/2018 Photo Album

My post of 03/01/2017 does a nice job of bringing the readers of this blog up to date with my views on stimulators. Over the last three years I settled on three body colors for the bulk of my stimulator searching efforts. Gray and green are nice general earthy colors, that seem to perform year round on western streams. Stimulators with yellow bodies excel during the phase of the season when golden stoneflies and yellow sallies are prevalent. This suggests to me that the yellow version is a solid imitation of the abundant dapping and egg laying stonefly varieties.

From the Side

Size 14 seems to be the best all purpose size for my prospecting needs. I suspect that it represents both caddis flies and stoneflies of intermediate size. In the case of yellow stoneflies I carry both size 14’s and 12’s, because golden stoneflies are larger than yellow sallies. This prepares me for scenarios, when one stonefly predominates.

Gray Stimulators

I counted all my stimulators and determined that my boxes contained adequate quantities of yellow in the desired sizes of 12 and 14. I deployed gray the most, and the inventory revealed, that I possessed nine, so I gathered the requisite materials and produced an additional six. Seven olive versions occupied my boxes, and I decided to tie three more to increment my total stock to ten. Prior to tying the stimulators I sifted through the damaged and unraveling flies in my various cylinders, and I collected quite a pile on my tying counter. These flies provided more than enough hooks to complete my stimulator construction efforts for 2018.

Misfit Flies to Be Converted into Stimulators