and full of colour
The Golden Olive is a nice little winged wet fly and with its touch of orange in the dressing, should be effective in bright conditions on the loch. I came across the fly on Davie McPhail’s YouTube channel and decided that I liked the look of the pattern. The hot orange floss tag, underbody and head of the fly creates an interesting contrast to the more sombre and naturally coloured olive dubbing, hackle and brown wing. It also includes a tail of pheasant tippet which I like to have in a wet fly intended for wild brown trout.
The Golden Olive has a very interesting overall colour scheme and seeing it brought to mind a conversation that I had some time ago with a fellow colleague where I worked. She and her husband were occasional fly anglers and would fly fish for rainbow trout, but were more at home sea angling from a charter boat.
When it came to choosing her fly she said she would open the fly box and pick the one that ‘ just jumped out’ at her. Certainly when we open our box of flies some wet fly patterns do and that will change with the differing amount and quality of light on the day; some days it will be the reds, oranges or yellows that cry for attention. Other days it may be olives, greens or browns, blacks, silvers, golds or blues. There are of course a multitude of other considerations to think about when choosing a wet fly pattern to use, but it may be a good place to start. I’m sure we have all heard of the saying that goes something along the lines of ‘dark day, use a dark fly, bright day, use a bright fly’. Stan Headley in his The Loch Fishers Bible also includes a table of useful fly colours to use under different light conditions as a very rough guide to assisting with choosing our fly on the day. All food for thought perhaps, to make selecting that initial fly a little bit easier.
When tying the fly, I used an orange 8/0 thread and tied in a length of hot orange floss at the bend of the hook; this floss formed the tag of the fly but wasn’t trimmed afterwards as it would later go on to form the underbody. Once I was happy with the tail, the silver wire rib was attached and the thread brought back up to the eye of the hook and then back down again to the bend. The body was then dubbed on quite loosely so that the floss would show through. After winding the rib the grey/olive hen hackle was wound and the red game hen hackle fibres added to create the wing. After forming the head and adding a drop of varnish, the fly was complete.
The Golden Olive now sits neatly in my box of wet flies ready to ‘jump out at me’ in the forthcoming season, which really is not that far away now!
SoftHackles 