Chad's New Olive BWO

Blue Wing Olive season is here and has been a good one. After a few trips this spring with some great BWO action, I went to the bench for my last outing and decided I wanted to work on some bwo emergers. So after I while at the bench and a few patterns later I came up with something close to the one above. I only tied up 3 since I was pressed for time and thought that should be enough to have for the outing. Well I stuck the 3 in my box and headed to the river the next day for some great fishing. Well low n behold, after fishing a good part of the day, sticking fish on everything we threw at them, from streamers, stonefly nymphs, caddis larva, and few midges. I forgot about the 3 bwos I had tied the day before. I was sitting on the bank and rerigging my rig and going through my fly boxes, I stumbled across this fly I tied the day before. I sat on the river bank watching the snow fall and noticed on the top of the river surface these little bwos starting to hatch and becoming more prevalent in the moments that have passed, so I tyed one on and got off my butt and made my first cast, and who would have thunk, not even a full drift, I had this huge tug on the end of my line and quite a fighter at that. Got him after a little fight and quickly released him. Got myself reorganized again , made my second cast with this fly. This time the strike was more powerful and a bigger fish at that. He broke off pretty quickly, rig lost. So I found myself on the bank side again tying up another rig. I thought to myself, was it a hoax that was being played on me, so I tied up the same rig and made my cast. About 10 feet into my drift, I hooked another fish, and this one air born about 3 time and got tangled up in a log mid stream and broke me off. Okay one fly left, so I found myself back on the stream side rigging myself up again. Same rig as before. Got up and made my cast , and again not 15 feet later, the line went tight and another big fish, this one I landed, snapped a picture and quick to release it. By this time the snow gave way to some sun and more bugs in the water. Got myself organized again and made another cast, and bam another huge hit and got to play this one for a couple of minutes, before he broke off, this time, I couldn’t tell if it was weekend tippet, bad knot or, just a strong fish that broke me off. No more flies of this particular pattern, made myself a mental note, when I get home, quickly hit the bench recreate it for next time. So over the course of the next few days I found myself at the bench tying a bunch of these up, and expanding on my original pattern making it a bit more realistic then the first versions I tied. Tried a new technique to my liking I came up with the attached photo. Did a quick google search on BWO bugs and came up with the Real BWO in the vise and by my own amazement, they look pretty darn close to being the same bug. I had them up on my computer screen and my son came into the room and took one look at it and said Dad, did you tie that bug, I said yes and he said you can hardly tell the difference. It looks almost like the real one, expect for the hook coming out of his but. LOL. I am very psyched at how this bug turned out and can’t wait to get back on the river to give it a few more outings. I am thinking this one will for sure take some big tailwater pigs. Got to make a trip up to the frying pan and give it a shot against those picky fish. Here is the details.

Hook: Partridge K3A Swedish Dry Fly Hook #18
Thread: Olive Benecchi 12/0
Tail: Coq De Leon
Body: Mix of BWO dry fly dubbing and Olive Micro Fly dubbing
Rib: FlexiFloss Olive
Under or lower wing: Tan UV Ice Dubbing, dubbed into noodle and tied in and then picked out sparsely to create the smaller mayfly wing.
Over or Standard wing: Z-lon colored up.
Thorax: Mix of Siman Peacock Eye Dubbing and Spiky squirrel dubbing and some deer or elk tips cut at the very top of the hair patch, twisted in a dubbing loop and picked out to get the life like legs.

I have been experimenting with some colors and came up with a grey adams, march brown, pmd, green drakes, and fall baetis.

Well Tight Threads, if you tye this bad boy up, drop me a line and let me know how this works.