Catch Trout During Blue Wing Olive Hatches
This Hatch of Small Mayflies gets Trout Feeding all Year Long
Dec 7, 2008
Blue wing olive mayflies look like tiny, greenish-gray sailboats on the water to humans, but they look like lunch to the trout on streams throughout the United States. These bugs often have greenish bodies and wings that are light gray to almost black.
Blue wing olives hatch - swim to the surface of the river, split their nymphal shells and emerge as winged insects - every month of the year. The newly hatched winged insects are called duns.
Blue wing olives are a prime trout food from fall through spring. This gives anglers a good chance at rising fish when few other anglers are on the water.
If it's cold and wet and cloudy, there's a good chance that the trout are up and feeding on blue wing olive duns - usually during the warmest time of the day.
Fishing Blue Wing Olive Flies
Anglers should carry flies that range from size 16 all the way down to a tiny size 24.
A few size 24 flies look like dryer lint in the hand. They're hard for humans to see, but sharp-eyed, picky trout easily find them.
Anglers fishing the wrong size fly often watch in frustration as feeding fish ignore their offerings.
Fishing tiny dry flies is easier than most anglers think. Good anglers wade as closely as possible to the rising fish and then tie the small fly onto a dropper leader attached to a larger fly. It's easy to spot the big - size 18 blue wing olive fly and then spot the smaller size 22 fly.
Good dry flies for blue wing olive dun hatches are: Sparkle Duns, Comparaduns and Hair-wing duns. A light tippet - 5X for larger flies and 6X for flies size 18 and smaller - brings more fish to the fly.
Fishing Nymphs and Emergers
Trout start eating nymphs - the immature insects that live among the underwater river rocks and weeds - a hour or more before the duns hatch.
The bugs, which swim like tiny fish, rise toward the surface and then sink back down.
Fishing a nymph fly in shallow riffles - the bouncy water - and just downstream of weedbeds sparks strikes from trout. Use nymphs, such as Pheasant Tails, Hare's Ears and Copper Johns in sizes matching the naturals. Using a strike indicator - a small dry fly or stick-on piece of foam on the leader - shows when the fish have eaten the fly.
As the hatch gets going, some bugs get stuck while climbing out of the nymphal skin at the surface. An emerger fly - such as an RS2 or a CDC Emerger - hook fish that are locked into eating cripples. Trout often lock onto cripples during the hatch and ignore the upright-winged duns.
It's a good idea to change to an emerger if duns are on the water and the trout aren't rising to a dry fly.
The Blue Wing Olive Spinner Secret
Most anglers miss the secret part of the blue wing olive hatch. The adult blue wing olives that survive the trout fly off to streamside brush and molt into the sexually mature insect, which is called a spinner. Spinners have bright, clear wings and big eyes.
Within 24 hours, the spinners mate and fly to the river's surface to lay eggs and die.
On many days, the spinners land on the water's surface at the same time the immature nymphs hatch into duns. Anglers see the upright wings of the duns - and tie on a dry fly with an upright wing.
Few anglers see the spinners - with clear, almost invisible wings - sprawled flat on the surface at the same time.
But the trout - especially the bigger, warier fish - see them just fine, and they lock onto the safer, easier prey.
Tie on a spinner - such as a Hackle Spinner - and watch tough trout get much easier!
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