quiet, settled and confident
The Dark Olive is one of those ‘quieter’ wet flies that sits patiently and confidently in your fly box just waiting for the time to come when it is selected and tied to your cast.
It is funny how the wet flies occupying space in your fly box each seem to have an attitude or personality about them. When you open your box some will visually jump out at you as if to shout ‘Me, me, choose me!’ Others sit more calmly, quietly and confidently in their ability to be allocated, along with one or two other fortunate individuals, to a position on your cast. While those wet flies that shout the loudest will vary from day to day due to the ambient light, the muted more sombre and reserved wet flies seem content and settled to simply wait their time to be chosen.
For this Dark Olive, I opted to use some dyed partridge fibres for the tail which created a nice olive-speckled tail to the fly. The dark body dubbing was made by first dubbing a very thin layer of black dubbing onto the thread and then dubbing over this base with dark olive dubbing. A gold wire rib, grey wing slip wing and a soft grey-olive hen hackle completed the fly.
A winged wet fly, perhaps for those overcast, windy and wet days that for some reason the olives seem to like to hatch on. This wet fly will occupy a slot or two in my fly box next season; a quiet, settled and confident space.
SoftHackles 