In my last few trips to the trout streams in South Carolina I have proven this concept yet again. Color and presentation mater but when you find the right combination to the streams entomology then you are in for a day of great fishing. Even comically large stones on small creeks can yield surprising results.
On my last trip I lost three black stones in a size #10 to deep fishing at the base of a large waterfall. Two were lost to a submerged log and one to a large trout that took it running. I tied on a leggy molted brown stone with no results so I tied on the only other black Stonefly I had in the box. It was a stone I bought in Montana, the land of giants, in a size I was sure would scare small children and trout alike.
The end result was trout after trout coming to the net with a big fatty cigar of a Stonefly hooked into the corner of their small mouths. I have thus come to the conclusion that as stoneflies are concerned, size matters little. Get the color right and you are set.
Stonefly
Graphite on paper
September 2015
