Start Fly Tying
Medium Dark Olive
The Dark Olives are upwing flies and are around in one form or another for much of the season. Handily, like hooks, they come in three main size categories: small, medium and large. For the medium, aim for a size fourteen, but tie to suit the flies on your water.
You'd think, given the colouring of the natural's wings, that a mid or dark dun (blue-ey grey) hackle would work better, but all I can say is that for me personally, a red hackle seems to be most effective. Fly fishing and tying is like that.
A tip when tying this: try to choose long, yet robust pheasant tail barbs for the body. If you tie them in at too fine a point they will easily snap when you try to wind the body. If this happens, try again and tie them in a little further down the length of the barbs. Fly tying is all about getting a feel for the materials. Try again, experiment, you will succeed.
Ingredients for the medium dark olive:
Hook size 14 - here we use a Kamasan B401
Brown thread
Red game hackle or similar
Gold wire ribbing
2 - 3 pheasant's tail barbs
You'd think, given the colouring of the natural's wings, that a mid or dark dun (blue-ey grey) hackle would work better, but all I can say is that for me personally, a red hackle seems to be most effective. Fly fishing and tying is like that.
A tip when tying this: try to choose long, yet robust pheasant tail barbs for the body. If you tie them in at too fine a point they will easily snap when you try to wind the body. If this happens, try again and tie them in a little further down the length of the barbs. Fly tying is all about getting a feel for the materials. Try again, experiment, you will succeed.
Ingredients for the medium dark olive:
Hook size 14 - here we use a Kamasan B401
Brown thread
Red game hackle or similar
Gold wire ribbing
2 - 3 pheasant's tail barbs
1: Wind thread in touching turns to the hook bend.
2: Snip a small bunch of barbs from a bigger red game feather for a tail. Length wise, you are looking for around the length of the hook shank. You are probably looking for around four or five of the finer barbs. Tie in.
3: Tie in a length of fine gold wire, for a rib.
4: Tie in three pheasant tail barbs by their tips. Leave enough to bind down to the shank as you continue to wind the thread to the end of the thorax region. Try and bind down 3-4mm of barb tip.
5: Hold the end of the pheasant tail barbs in your fingers, and wind in close turns to form the body. Bind down with three turns of thread, then snip off the exess barbs.
6: Wind the rib and tie down with three turns of thread.Tie in the hackle and take thread to the hook eye, ready to finish the fly.
7: Wind the hackle. Use two to three turns for a genetic cock hackle, thee to four turns for other less dense hackles. Tie off two to three turns of thread, form head and finish fly.
Go catch a fish with it.
Go catch a fish with it.