This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is Lee Wulff’s Surface Stone Fly.
This is a very interesting fly, one built with a molded, plastic body. It’s one of several plastic body flies a friend loaned to me for my Throw Back Thursday Fly posts.
In Lee Wulff’s Trout on a Fly (1986), he states he came up with the idea for plastic flies in 1950. He dropped solvent on some plastic to soften the material. Then he stuck part of a feather into the soft spot created and it hardened in place. The Surface Stone Fly is one of those creations where a stub is created to tie on the parachute hackle. Wulff stated it was the first fly used to catch Atlantic Salmon that floated in the surface film. These flies were first used in Labrador and Newfoundland.
This is one of several Form-A-Lures Wulff hoped would be a new and better method of tying flies. But it looks to me that the flies with a plastic bodies didn’t catch on with fly fishers over the years.
If you are a regular at RiverKeeper Flies, you might remember other Wulff fly patterns – the Blonde Wulff, Royal Wulff, and White Wulff.
To learn more about Lee Wulff (1905 – 1991), be sure to pick up Mike Valla’s terrific book – The Founding Flies – 43 American Masters, Their Patterns and Influence listed on my Fly Fishing and Fly Tying Books page.
Enjoy…go fish!
