Henry’s Fork Yellow Sally Stonefly

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is a Henry’s Fork Yellow Sally Stonefly.

I was looking for a fly to highlight today and decided to look in my library to see if I could locate a Yellow Sally stonefly imitation.

Why a Yellow Sally fly, you ask?

I’m headed to the Deschutes River next week to fish the Salmonfly and Golden Stone hatch. Our guide recommended bringing Yellow Sally imitations as well.

So I opened Mike Lawson’s Spring Creeks (2003) book to see if he had an imitation. I found the Henry’s Fork Yellow Sally on page 268.

He designed the fly to be lightly hackled for fishing the slow currents of the Henry’s Fork to trick hard-to-catch fish. The body color can be pale yellow to bright green.

I’ve fished a lot, but honestly have never seen fish key on this fly. We’ll see if I use the fly.

I quickly tied the fly tonight before completing the post. Looking at the picture in Mike’s book, it appeared he used a dun colored hackle. I chose a lighter one to imitate the live insect seen above. Notice the red shade on the body sides and butt? One could easily add a little red dubbing to imitate the different shades.

Here is a view of the fly from the bottom.

Materials

Enjoy…go fish!