This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Little Olive Wonder Wing Stone.
I tied this size 18 fly using olive CDC for the body and barred dun for the wing and hackle.
In researching a different fly, I found that Chauncy Lively tied a Little Black Stonefly using Wonder Wings to imitate the natural insect’s wings laying flat against the top it its body. You might recall the name Chauncy Lively because I recently featured on of his flies, Lively’s March Brown Dun.
W.J Golding is credited with inventing the Wonder Wing in 1934. It was a special way to create upright wings using contours of feathers.
This is a Wonder Wing Drake I featured as a Throw Back Thursday Fly back in December 2016. My friend Al Beatty tied this fly.
Gretchen and Al Beatty graciously provided the information for that post. Much of the information was from their eBook entitled Wonder Wing Flies.
Fast forward to today and this Little Olive Wonder Wing Stone is my variation of Tim Flagler’s Little Black Stone Dry.
The reversed barbs created with the Wonder Wing technique imitates the natural vein of the wing, using the feather contours for an impressionistic wing.
The video below is from Tim Flagler is the owner of Tightline Productions, L.L.C., a video production company located in Hunterdon County, NJ. A customer asked me to tie up an olive version of the fly. This video is from March 2015.
The wing is impressionistic of these little stones.
Tim references a video from Johnny Utah a few years earlier of the fly. This is from March 2012.
I haven’t fished this fly to see how durable it is.
Enjoy…go fish!
