Half Stone
Two materials, two halves, and the name says so: a pale cream body of natural horse hair over the rear, and a dark thorax of mole fur at the front, under a long blue dun hackle. It began life as a wet fly imitating an emerging dun and is now more often fished dry, which is a distinction the fish appear not to make. The colour break is the design — pale abdomen, dark thorax, exactly the contrast a dun shows as it splits its shuck.
Early season, when the first olives are coming off in cold water and fish are taking something in the film rather than on it. Fish it ungreased or barely greased so it sits low.
A dun half out of its shuck is pale behind and dark in front, and this is that silhouette reduced to two materials. Fished in the film rather than on top, it presents the stage the fish are actually eating during a slow, cold hatch.
