Its all in the ColourTying the Awesome Olive. Olive is a very good colour on the lochs I fish. As a colour dark olive just seemed to work when incorporated into my soft hackle wet flies, spiders and flymphs. I began to wonder why. In between the muddy patches and attached to stones and rocks I found areas of dark green weed on the loch bed. This weed provides the trout with both cover and food. I came to conclude that this same weed may provide the the insect pupae living in the weed with their colour. Nature is amazing and adaptable. I doubted if an insect pupa living in this dark green weed would adopt a contrasting colour to it. Much more likely the pupa would adopt a colour that would blend into the weed. A kind of pupa camouflage if you will. That camouflage would therefore most likely be shades of dark green. Suddenly the preference of the trout for shades of olive in my soft hackle wet fly patterns began to make some logical sense.

When thinking about the design of my soft hackle wet fly pattern, that which was to become the Awesome Olive, I wanted a slim and light soft hackle wet fly, echoing the profile of most of my other soft hackle wet fly patterns. It also had to be comprised of varying shades of olive. When tying the fly aim for a well proportioned and slim profile. I like to tie my hackles sloping backwards along the thorax and body area of the fly to aid a slim profile. This is true of most of my of my other soft hackle wet flies. The hackle itself is just one full turn of the hen hackle feather. After stroking the hackle along the body of the fly a few tuns of thread will set it in place. To help with this I tie the hackle fairly close to the eye of the hook. This also helps create a small headed fly. The hook pattern I have used here is a debarbed light wire #14 hook. The rib too is fine. I have used some fuse wire stripped from the inside of some old domestic electrical cable for the rib. The result is a slim and light fly which you can fish just above the weed beds.

 

top of page