Blue Winged Olive, Thorax Style
This fly was featured two years ago in a fly tying class but if you missed that, here it is again. It is an absolute must for the Owens River fishout and it is generally good throughout the West. (Ed. note: The thorax fly tying style was developed more than 50 years ago by Vince Marinaro (A Modern Dry-Fly Code) to take very large and extremely selective Brown trout in Letort Creek, Carlisle, PA, still a highly productive limestone spring creek more challenging even than Hot Creek and Hat Creek here.)
Hook: TMC 100 (standard dry fly) size 16-18 (12-14 in Rocky Mountain waters)
Thread: Olive 8/0
Wing: Light gray turkey flat
Tail: Light dun hackle fibers (spade hackle, if you can find it)
Hackle: Light dun rooster
Body: Olive Superfine dubbing, or equivalent BWO dubbing. (The natural varies from pale olive gray to yellow olive green to rusty olive, differing from place to place, time to time, and even within a hatch in some cases.)
1. Crimp barb.
2. Attach thread mid-shank and leave hanging 1/3 back from eye.
3. Select a bunch of turkey flat barbs, lining up tips and cutting from stem.
4. Measure turkey flat barbs equal in length to hook shank and tie to shank with tips extending beyond the eye. Cut barb butts off at an angle.
5. Stand wing upright making several wraps as a dam to hold barbs vertical. Return thread to cut barb butts.
6. Select 10-12 stiff light dun hackle barbs, line up tips, and tie in so tips are one hook shank length beyond the end of the shank. Cut butts even with wing barb butts. (Ed. note: Marinaro used just two very stiff fibers and split them with a tiny ball of dubbed fur, also a method he devised.)
7. Dub slender, tapered body up to mid shank.
8. Select stiff-barbed light dun rooster hackle with barbs 11/2 hook gapes long. Remove fuzz at butt, cut several barbs off each side at butt end (just above the end of the webby portion of the feather), lay on shank and tie in place.
9. Dub remainder of hook to one eye length behind eye.
10. Wrap hackle forward in three turns behind wing and three turns in front of wing. Tie off and cut excess. (Ed. note: Marinaro devised the X-wrapping method, taking two turns behind the wing on top and ahead of the wing on the bottom, then two or three turns ahead of the wing on the top and behind the wing on the bottom. The hackle planes make an X when viewed from the side. This style of hackling has reappeared on some Lawson patterns.)
11. Wrap a small head with tying thread, whip finish, cut thread and seal with head cement if desired.
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