A Caricature of an Insect: The Blue Wing Olive

I’ve posted about the tools, materials, and even the hooks used in fly tying. Today we’re going to tie it all together (sorry!) and make a fly.

We’re going to make a fly called a Blue Wing Olive. It’s intended to imitate mayflies of the genus Baetis. There’s thousands of species in the genus, but most of them have an olive green body, with grey wings, tail, and legs.

This is the fly we’re trying to tie:

Wait a Minute!

The fly doesn’t look much like the bug, does it? But it catches fish really well. Even when the surface of the water is covered with the real bugs, the fish will bite the flies too. Why is that?

It turns out the fish really don’t have time to look closely at a fly before they have to decide whether to eat it or not. If the fish is in a stream, the current will carry the fly away. In a lake, some other fish in the school is likely to eat it if you don’t. So the fish has to make a snap decision: is this food, or not?

Also, bear in mind that the fish is looking at the underside of the fly. And they’re looking at it through the semi-reflective surface of the water. So even the real bugs don’t look the same to a fish as they would to us. And the fly looks close enough that a hungry fish will bite it.

A Recipe for Success

Over the years some fly patterns have been established that are proven to work well. The recipes for these patterns, called dressings, specify what materials are used. The order that the materials are listed correspond to the order they’re tied to the hook. So a simple list of ingredients also tells you how to tie the fly.

Blue Wing Olive
Hook: Mustad 94840, Size 12-20
Thread: Olive
Wing: Dark blue dun hackle tips
Tail: Dark blue dun hackle fibers
Body: Olive dubbing
Hackle: Dark blue dun

In this case the wing, tail, and hackle are all “dark blue dun” feathers. Dark blue dun describes the color of the feathers. They grew on the back of the neck of a rooster.

For the wings we’ll want tiny feathers from right up by the top. We will take the hackle feather from around the middle. For the tail fibers, we’ll use some from one of the really big feathers at the bottom.

The Hook

Thread

The thread is nylon. I used a light green color for this fly to help you see what’s going on.

The thread is tied to the hook by wrapping several wraps around the hook shank. Start in the middle and work forward for 8-10 wraps, then wrap back toward the bend of the hook. That locks the thread onto the hook so it won’t come loose.

Wings

Next we select two feathers for the wings. We get the tips of the feathers lined up evenly and hold them against the hook shank, with the tips pointed toward the eye of the hook. We want the wings to be a little longer than the straight part of the hook shank.

When you place the wings on the hook, pay attention to how far back you go. To scale the fly properly regardless of how big the hook is, scale it by the width of the eye of the hook (when looking at the side of the hook). You should place the wings two eye-widths back from the eye end of the hook shank. A few wraps of thread secures the wings to the shank.

Next, lift the tips of the wings vertical, and make a few winds of thread in front of the wings to make them stand up.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to divide the wings. You want them to form a nice V shape. To do that, wind the thread between the wings in a figure 8. The buildup of thread will force the wings to stay in the right place.

Now we wind the thread back to the curve of the hook and attach the tail.

The Tail

We’ll make the tail by using 10-15 fibers from a large feather. We start by lining up the tips of the fibers.

Then we peel the fibers off of the shaft of the feather.

The tail is tied in much like the wings, except that it points backwards.

Once it’s tied in we trim the excess.

The Body

For the body we’ll use synthetic dubbing. Dubbing comes as a wad of loose fibers. We tease out a tiny bit of it, and stretch the fibers into a long, flat shape.

We feed out about six inches of thread from the bobbin, and coat it with dubbing wax. That makes the thread sticky, and we can stick the dubbing fibers onto the waxed thread.

Now twist up the dubbing around the thread to make a furry little rope.

Now wrap the dubbing rope forward from the tail toward the wings. Leave about one eye-width between the end of the dubbing and the wings.

The Hackle

The hackle is the “lion’s mane” ring of fibers sticking out around the wings. If you wind a feather tightly around the hook shank, the individual fibers of the feather will splay out like a fan.

The length of the fibers is important to the proportions of the fly. It should match the length of the gap between the shank and the hook point. To measure this, you use a hackle gauge. You wrap the feather around the post, and see how far the fibers reach on the scale. It should match the hook size.

Strip off any fibers that are stuck together, starting at the base of the feather. Tie in the feather tight to the dubbing, and wind the thread forward to the wing, then in front of the wing for several turns. Stop about one eye-width from the eye of the hook.

Trim off the excess feather shaft, and tie a couple half hitches to secure the hackle.

Now grab the hackle tip with the hackle pliers. Wind the hackle forward to the wings. It should take 4-6 wraps. Wrap around the underside of the fly and continue wrapping for two or three more wraps forward of the wing.

Keep tension on the hackle while you use your other hand to wrap the thread over the hackle to tie it down. Take 3-4 wraps before releasing tension on the hackle or you’ll regret it. Tie a couple half hitches, then trim the excess hackle.

The Head

Last, and least, is the head. Wind the thread forward to the eye of the hook and back to the hackle twice. Cover up the knots and the cut end of the hackle, and try to create a nice taper between the hackle and the eye. You can finish with a bunch of half hitches to keep the thread secure, or you can get fancy and do a whip finish, either with a tool or by hand if you know the trick. Finish with a dab of glue to make the head shiny and hard.

And there you have it! Happy fishing!