The sofa pillow

The sofa pillow (click image for detail)

 



Fly of the week: Sofa Pillow

The sofa pillow is one of those rare and exotic flies that everyone should learn to tie.  O.K. maybe it’s not so rare at all.   As a matter of fact if you don’t tie your own you will have a hard time finding this pattern anywhere.  Why you may ask?  Because the salmon fly freaks clean out the local shops early.  Your best bet is to at least try and tie this variation yourself.  The original Sofa Pillow was created by a fly fisherman/tier named Pat Barnes, in the 1940’s.  As the story goes, Pat was guiding a group of Texans who couldn’t catch a thing using small trout flies.  To solve the dilemma, Pat tied up a huge stonefly imitation using some random material he had lying around of his tying desk.  One of the Texans’ drawled, “Why, it’s as big as a sofa piller,” and the fly became famous.  This picture is of a copied tie of the original fly.  There are many imitations and improved flies tied on the original work of Pat Barnes including the famous stimulator of Randy Kaufman.  There you have it the “Sofa Piller” story and lore. 

 

Charlie Bagley

{Recipe for the fly shown}

 

Hook: stone fly dry hook 6-10

Thread: black

Body: red floss

Tail: red duck quill

Wing: natural squirrel tail

Over wing: also natural squirrel