Stimulators 02/17/2026 Photo Album

For an account of my introduction to stimulators as well as a hard luck story visit my post of 01/26/2015. Stimulators have become a foundation fly in my dry fly box since the 2015 time period.

Stimulators can be a bit tricky to tie. The original pattern calls for counter wrapping a fine wire rib through the palmered hackles. I do not like the idea of having the extra weight of wire, albeit thin, on a dry fly, so I skip that step and simply palmer the hackle. Another hazard related to tying stimulators is allowing the deer hair wing to spin around the hook shank. When mounting the wing, maintain a solid pinch of the deer hair to the top of the hook, until five or six thread wraps coil through the butt ends of the hair.

Olive Stimulator

Now that I accumulated ten plus years of experience with stimulators, I boiled the pattern down to three productive body colors; yellow, gray and olive, and the olive is somewhat interchangeable with the gray.

Yellow Stimulator

The yellow finds its way on my leader during golden stonefly hatch time. The gray and olive seem to be solid general searching patterns during the summer post-run off time. If a hippie stomper is generating refusals, I often swap it for a stimulator as the leading fly in a double dry setup.  Like the hippie stomper, stimulators are quite buoyant and are relatively easy to track, although I feel that the white wing of the hippie stomper is a bit easier to follow.

Another Olive

I counted all my stimulators and determined that I was adequately supplied. I chose to save time, and I bypassed tying additional stimulators. It’s a great fly that I should probably float more frequently.