Tying The Stimulator
by James Daly

Material List
Hook: Daichii 1560 nymph hook size 10 (or any other brand curved dry or nymph hook size 2-12)
Thread: Uni 6/0 Black. Red for the head
Tail: Elk Hock (or other hollow hair)
Body: Peacock herl, 3 strands twisted
Hackle: Brown over Peacock. Grizzle (Brown in this case) over head.
Wing: Elk Hock
Head: Superfine Orange Sulphur Dub (or other dryfly dubbing, in any color you please)

Note: You should also have, at your disposal, a hair stacker for evening out the tail and wing hair. Although, the fish don't care, your fishing partners will when critiquing your tying!!!

1. Start you thread behind the eye and work your way through the bend until you are directly above the barb.

2. Put a small bunch of Elk hock into the stacker. Even it out and tie in a tail that is about as long as the hook gape is wide.

3. Tie in 2 brown hackles (or dark hackles that are symbiotic with the body color you have chosen). Tie one under the hook shank in one direction. Tie the other on top of the hook shank in the opposite direction. This will help you as you counter rib the 2 hackles. I like to use a hackle that is a little over the gape of the hook. For catskill dries, this is a no no. But we aren't tying catskills here. Now are we??

4. Tie in 3 strands of Peacock herl directly in front of the tail. This will make the body. Tie them in about an inch, or so, from their TIPS. This will help with the next step.

5. Take the three herls and twist them together. Voila, you have a herl dubbing brush. Nothing better than Mother Nature!!!!!

6. Wrap the herl a little over half way to the eye and tie off.

7. Take the bottom hackle first and palmer it as normal. Take around 5 turns of hackle until you reach the body terminus. Then, take the top hackle and counter rib it over the bottom hackle with 5 turns. So, the bottom goes from below to up and over. The top goes from top to bottom and under. Does that make sense?? A very dense hackle should be the result. The reason for this is if you only used the one hackle you would create a corkscrew effect that can cause the fly to rotate/twist the leader when you cast. Trust me on this, I know from experience.

8. Take double to triple the amount of Elk you used for the tail and place in the stacker. Even it out and tie this in with 3 soft loops, at first, moving the thread with progressively tighter wraps towards the eye. This will cut down on the Elk's desire to flare out on you. You want to create a wing, not spin the elk hair. Add a drop of glue here for durability.

9. Now, take a grizzly hackle and tie it in on the side and directly in front of the peacock body. This will be the hackle for the head. Be sure tie this in with the good side of the feather facing up. This will cause the hackle fibers, when tied in, to have a tendancy to flow towards the back of the fly.

10. Next, dub on your orange superfine dub. This step is a contradiction to what we've all been taught when dubbing flies. To dub the head, you will want the larger portion of the dubbing at the top of the thread (or closest to the hook shank) and taper it to very thin nearest the bobbin. Where as, when creating mayfly bodies we want the opposite, thin at first and building towards bulk at the end. Make sense? I guess it should look like an ice cream cone or something thereabout.

11. Lay the dubbing on, keeping a small amount of space for the head. At this point, you will want to whip finish or half hitch the thread. If you half hitch, make sure you hit it with a drop of varnish, or glue, or whatever you choose. Switch over to the red thread after dubbing.

12. Take three turns (or more, depending on hook size) of the grizzly hackle. Tie in, cast off with a whip finish, add a drop of glue and you're done!!!!

This pattern really is fun to tie. It gives you a good understanding of many things. It teaches you thread control when dealing with hair and what you need to do to keep it from flaring. It gives you practice on multi direction ribbing techniques (the same are applied to tinsel, floss, etc as with the hackle in the body). It teaches you how to make smooth transitions from multiple body segments. The list goes on and on. It is a great learning pattern, plus it catches fish!!!!!! This version utilizes peacock for the body. On most others, it will be a dubbing body. You can use whatever you want. That's what makes this pattern so versatile. If you're tired of tying the same old dry flies, sit down and spend an hour or two with the Stimulator.

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