Yellow Sally

Telling it apart

• Small, size 14–16, uniform bright yellow — the showiest of our stoneflies.
• Wings folded flat, two short tails — traits shared with every stonefly in this guide.
• The female actively skitters across the water to lay eggs, rather than simply settling onto it.
• Nymph in fast, clean riffles, like most stoneflies.

The stonefly that actually touches the water

The Golden Stone and the Giant Black Stone, covered earlier in this chapter, emerge out of the water and only return briefly to lay — their adults spend most of their time well away from the river. The Yellow Sally does things differently: the female actively skitters across the surface to disperse her eggs, rather than just brushing the water for a second before leaving.

That's a far more active, visible adult behaviour than its bigger cousins', and it's exactly what makes the Yellow Sally so easy to spot on a summer evening.

A presentation that moves

Because the real insect actively moves across the water rather than drifting passively, a perfectly still dry on a dead drift underrepresents what's actually happening. A small twitch, a brief motion that ripples the fly slightly, imitates the natural behaviour far better — and often takes more fish than a flawless drift.

It's one of the rare situations in this guide where deliberately moving the fly is an advantage rather than a mistake to correct.

Bright yellow, easy to track

Its uniform bright-yellow colour makes it one of the easiest stoneflies to track on the water, even at a distance — a real advantage late in the day as light fades. Look for it in the same fast riffles as this chapter's other stoneflies, on June and July evenings.

A small bright-yellow dry, given a light twitch, covers this hatch well without needing to complicate the presentation any further.