Kapok Stonefly

Kapok is a cotton-like fibre from the seed pods of trees in the Malvaceae family, commonly used last century as cushion or mattress stuffing. Its buoyant characteristics, derived from its hollow fibres, also saw it as the preferred filling for life jackets up until the 1980’s.

Although limited to its natural cream colour, kapok began to appear in fly patterns — light duns, caddis, hoppers, etc. — all benefiting from the high riding characteristics. While many tried dying kapok, success was patchy at best and it eventually fell out of favour due to the increasing colour range of modern materials.

Skip forward a few decades with modern dyes and techniques, and Semperfli have cracked the kapok dye code, releasing kapok dubbing in a wide range of colours.

Semperfli technical jargon states it will support 30 times its own weight, and is finer than ‘Superfine dubbing’ at 30–36 microns, with an average fibre length of 1.8cm. It feels similar to fine rabbit or mole fur. The fine fibres lend themselves to smaller patterns — beetles, duns or caddis, and in this case small stoneflies.

Typically, large size 8 or 10 nymphs and dries are used for imitating stoneflies (FlyLife #81, GTS stonefly nymph), but there are numerous smaller species that are often going unnoticed, judging by our fly box contents.

Like their larger cousins, they hatch throughout the warmer months, with the nymphs crawling out of the water onto streamside rocks and vegetation. Often active throughout the day, stoneflies are clumsy flyers, some species reverting to just skimming over the surface, leading to them being mistaken for dark caddis or duns. How many times have we heard ‘the odd dun popping off’ when getting a stream report?

Keeping the theme of all things old are new again, this pattern has a ‘wonderwing’. This style of tying peaked back in the ’90s. Immaculate mayfly patterns with large wonderwings, or wonderbodies (FL#3), looked the part but were inherently too delicate for practical fishing purposes. This current wonderwing style of a thin wing overlaying the body is becoming more popular, producing a compact and durable version.

To start lay a base of thread down the hook shank, finishing with an extra wrap or two at the end to form a small hump.

Select half a dozen hackle barbs, strip from the shaft and tie them in forming a short tail, roughly half a hook shank long. Wrap back towards the hump as you tie them down; the last wrap up against the hump will make the barbs fan out slightly.

Next dub some kapok on to your thread and form a thin, even body two thirds of the way up the shank. Avoid building up too much bulk, think thin mayfly spinner rather than fat caddis.

For the wing, select a large hackle feather — the bottom end of hackles with the softer barbs are excellent for this. On the bottom two centimetres of the shaft, stroke the barbs back, forming a gap in the hackle.

Hold the hackle feather on top of the hook shank, the gap level with the front of the body and the stroked back barbs pointing towards the hook eye. Tie it down with just two loose wraps. Then, while gently holding the tie-in point to keep the feather on top of the hook shank, pull the feather backwards, forming the wonderwing as it is pulled through the loose wraps.

Firmly tie down the wing in front of the body, trimming away the excess barbs. Then trim off the remaining hackle feather behind the wing. This will leave a thin wing laying over the body, just like the natural.

Lastly, tie in a small hackle at the base of the wing and wind forward in touching turns to behind the hook eye. Secure and trim any excess before a neat whip finish.

Many of us have fallen into the routine of the ubiquitous dry/dropper combination when fishing the streams. Hedging our bets appears an obvious choice, although it does trap you into using a larger dry pattern to support the nymph.

The Kapok Stonefly may be a small pattern, but have the confidence to search the water with it, even skating it down-and-across on smoother runs. You will find a single fly is easier to fish with in the tighter confines of a stream, allowing bolder casts close to or under streamside vegetation. The fish are often less wary of smaller flies, taking them with confidence.

Stoneflies are present in most of our streams, their numbers related to water quality. The cleaner freestone type waters and alpine streams support large populations of these smaller stonefly species.

In my early fly fishing years, a small size 14–16 Black Spinner was my favourite pattern on the upper Loddon in Central Victoria. It took me many years to realise that it was most likely taken as one of the plentiful stoneflies rather than a mayfly spinner.