Randall Kaufmann’s Simulator

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is Randall Kaufmann’s Simulator Peacock.

I was paging through John Shewey’s Favorite Flies for Oregon (2021) and found Kaufmann’s Simulator.

I’ve been a big Randall Kaufmann fan since the 1980’s. His books, Tying Nymphs (1994) and Tying Dry Flies (1991), were the first quality color fly tying instructions in my fly tying library. I still remember stopping and shopping in the original fly shop.

Shewey writes the fly came about in the 1970’s as Randall was preparing for an upcoming fly fishing trip on the Deschutes River. He was tying his Kaufmann Stonefly Nymph for himself and a few friends which takes quite a bit of time to tie. He needed something simpler to crank out, but still effective to imitate a stonefly nymph.

Kaufmann explains the fly can imitate just about anything. Change the size and color to match what a trout might see floating by in the water column.

Randall’s inspiration for the fly came from Charlie Brooks and Polly Rosborough and their ideas of tying flies “in the round”.

Read more about this fly and others in Shewey’s book:

You’ll even find my very own RiverKeeper Soft Hackle Cripple featured as one of the 50 flies along with a few other of my fly images.

Enjoy…go fish!

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