The Twitchy Chicken

A simple stonefly with maximum movement

***Update.  On a recent fishing trip to some high mountain lakes we fished this fly as a damsel fly, and it produced some very picky fish.  The recipe I was using is listed below (Links provided for each material):

Twitchy Chicken eating Brook Trout

Hook: Allen N202 #10
Thread: MFC premium thread - 8/0 chartreuse
Tail: Turkey biots - dark olive
Body: Arizona mega synthetic dubbing - bronze peacock
Ribbing: UTC sm ultrawire - green
Hackle: Whiting coq de leon hen saddle - speckled fl. green chartreuse

~Cheech

Twitchy Chicken golden stonefly

This pattern is derived from a pattern that I learned a long time ago from Dennis Brakke.  He was an excellent stillwater angler who we highlighted a few months ago.  I remember seeing a pattern similar to this sitting in piles on his workbench waiting to go out to customers, so I knew that it had to be a killer.  He tied his version with a pheasant "church window" feather, and on my version I use Whiting coq de leon hen hackle.  I don't even know what he called his fly, so I'll just call this one the Twitchy Chicken due to the amount of soft hackle that is crammed into it.

This pattern skips all of the fancy (and maybe unnecessary) parts of a stonefly nymph, and highlights the parts that will trigger a fish into eating.  In my opinion, a stonefly MUST have a forked tail and legs to trigger fish.  Not much else.  (Yes, that means that some of my flies are over-done, but I'm cool with that.)


~ Cheech

Hook: Dai Ichi 1260 #10
Thread:  UTC 140
Tail: Turkey Biots
Body: Wapsi sow scud dubbing
Ribbing: UTC sm ultrawire
Hackle: Whiting coq de leon hen saddle

Video Tutorial: