Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Emerging Olives

The mild winter combined with low, clear water throughout the New Jersey, Eastern PA area, as given us some great winter dry fly fishing this year.  The trout have had a steady diet of little black and brown stoneflies, midges and blue-winged olives (Baetis tricaudatus), the last few weeks.

When these small, brownish-olive mayflies reach the water surface after drifting up from the bottom below, they tend to drift for some distance in the film as they expand their wings and fill them with life-giving fluid, before flying off into the air.  This behavior makes them an easy target for hungry trout looking up for a meal, and an accurate imitation of this stage can be the ticket for a good winter day's dry fly fishing.

Although I will use thorax style patterns and snowshoe rabbit foot emergers to imitate this stage, the pattern that is the most consistent producer for me is the floating nymph.  I came across this pattern many years ago and have used it successfully since.  I don't know who the originator was, but I do know that there have been several other similar patterns that have come along.  John Goddard tied his using a small, styrofoam ball held in place with a piece of nylon stocking wrapped around it that was then tied to the hook shank in the same location as the polypropylene ball I use here.
  

Hook: Standard dry fly #18 -24
Thread: 6/0 Olive Danville
Tail: Dun hackle fibers
Body: Mixed brown and olive
Wing bud: Gray polypropylene
Legs: Dun hackle fibers

Simple and very effective.

And sharpen those hooks!   

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great looking fly!

I'm gonna tie some up.

Thanks for posting.

Anonymous said...

I like how your dubbing materialshows the segments of the abdomen