Blue Wing Olive’s (Quill Body…fumbling about)

The lens shows how much my assumption was correct as I fumbled about wrapping the quill body over the underlay of partridge fibers (an extension of the tail fibers). I tried to space the wraps and felt I smothered the body with too thick & too stiff of a quill. The thorax was rabbit fur, olive color, and again the guard hairs were a bit much beneath the clear wingcase material. scraggly is generally ok with me given my impressionistic bent in fly tying.; an excuse for my lack of exactness perhaps?  This is a size 16 pupa style hook. I probably should darken the wingcase (per a previous suggestion by Planet Trout). A felt marker would do the trick.

I copied this pattern from one I saw at a Sportsman’s Warehouse in Medford, Oregon. Simple in looks, I frankly struggle with the parachute portion. The tail is a few strands of pearl Krystal Flash, the body is  turkey feather fibers wrapped and coated with clear nail polish (I have used pheasant feather fibers and stripped quills too). The post is white Z-lon (or Antron) wrapped with a light dun dry fly quality hackle. I over hackled in this instance and the brown thread finished off the thorax and head to cover up the post tie in point and hackle tie off points. This was tied on a size 16 hook and I tied maybe a dozen. My patience for such ties is nil of late, but the BWO’s are now beginning to come off in the afternoon on cloudy days. So, my yearly tie of BWO’s must commence.

This one looks better in the abdomen area. I had packaged quills that I soaked and they seemed to wrap in nicer. I tied the quill in at the fragile tip, at the tail or bend of the hook. I broke off this tie in a few times before getting a good connection. The quill and olive thread thorax were again covered with clear nail polish for durability and sheen.  Again a size 16 pupa style hook. The mashed hackle is a sign of my clumsy wraps. It will work, but I will never win a fly tying award. I have noted before that if I had to tie a dozen flies for one of those fly tying silent auctions deals, I would probably struggle through several dozen before arriving at a solid, uniform dozen. Ugh….. Anymore, I am beginning to think a simple tapered thread body with a contrasting thread rib would be adequate for a body. Buoyancy is my only consideration….would it work? I have become to pragmatic in tying to dilly dally about with exact imitations and many minutes per fly… impatience is not a good trait for fly tying. But, I will invest enough time for a functional, productive creation. Nothing more. Hence, I don’t muck about with Atlantic Salmon patterns. Spey tube flies are the extent of my creative bent.

I need to tie a simple nymph dropper. My initial efforts were blah and boring. Back to the drawing board. Simply ran out of patience and hate! size 18 hooks: