Rowley Stone

This is one of my bread and butter patterns that I fish whenever large stonefly nymphs are present. It is especially deadly in deep riffles and faster water since stonefly nymphs typically prefer fast oxygenated water. It has produced great fishing lately at Coffee Pot Rapids on the Henry's Fork, and at the difficult Spanish Fork River. It's easy to tie and it catches fish like crazy! Try it, you'll see.

RECIPE:

Hook: Any straight shank nymph hook size 6-12 (Tiemco 5263)

Bead: Gold Tungsten

Thread: Olive 6/0 Danville

Weight: Lead wire .020

Tail: Natural goose biots

Rib: Large copper wire

Flash: Black Flashabou

Abdomen: Peacock Semi-Seal dubbing

Wing case: Black Swiss Straw

Thorax: Peacock Semi-Seal dubbing

Legs: Black-dyed hen saddle

Collar: Bighorn orange Sow-Scud dubbing

1- Start by placing the tungsten bead and lead wire on the hook.
2- Oppose and tie in two goose biots at the bend of the hook. Make them roughly half the length of the the hook shank. Wrap the thread forward and tie biots off behind lead wire and clip off excess.
3-Tie in a piece of large copper wire on the bottom side of the hook. Then prepare to dub the abdomen.
4-Dub the abdomen leaving one-third of the hook shank undubbed.
5-Counter wrap the copper wire four or five wraps and tie off.
6- Tie in 4 strands of black flashabou. Fold a piece of swiss straw over until it is about half the width of the hook gap and tie it in front of the flashabou.
7- Tie in the dyed-black hen feathers as legs directly in-front of the swiss straw.
8- Dub the thorax with a large clump of peacock Semi-Seal dubbing.
9- Bring the swiss straw and flashabou forward and tie them off directly behind the bead.
10- Tie in another set of legs behind the bead again using a dyed-black hen feathers.
11- Dub a collar directly behind the bead, whip-finish, clip, and ...
... the finished fly.
Here is a pattern variation with a peacock Semi-Seal dubbing collar instead of orange. The easiest way to adapt this fly to match other stonefly species is by changing the color of dubbing. Such as, yellow ice-dubbing instead of the peacock dubbing to represent a golden stonefly nymph.

One more thing, this fly is often large enough to entice strikes from sluggish fish in the middle of winter, so don't be too shy to tie on a large fly like this when everyone else is fishing size 22 midges. If there are large stones in the river, the fish will hardly let a delicious meal like this fly pass by. Good luck and stay warm!