Larry L wrote:

Green, yep green, with envy. I'd love to have a "home stream" that I could
take seriously.

Just curious, when you say "olives" I assume you mean baetis, one of the
swimmer mayfly nymphs. Do you present your pattern with any "action" or
dead drift? I've always just fished a PT dead drift, ( or tried to, my
nymphing skills don't justify using the word 'skill' ) but your skitter on
top posts made me think that maybe you are working differently down below,
too G



I'm not too up on Latin names but supposedly the "Olives" are made up of
Baetis and some other I don't remember. However, use of the two Latin
names is misleading and even the common label Olives is misleading.
Maybe small gray Mayfly might be better.

Locally they hatch out throughout most of the year in various
permutations. They range from of a size 17 down to a 26. Wing colors
range from very light to very dark gray. Body color is mainly shades of
gray with some olive and rust. So functionally, the name covers a wide
range of bugs, whether or not the scientific name is the same or not is
irrelevant, IMO.

Back to your question. Since this class of bugs is so important on my
home river, I fish it alot and use a variety of flies. How I fish it
depends on what part of the hatch the fish are concentrating on. When
there are bugs out but no surface activity, a dead drifted PT usually
works. They seem less fussy in terms of fly type, and to some degree
size, at this stage partly because they're often feeding in faster
water. If they're up in the water column or making splashy rises (this
is generally in areas of less current) a wet hackle or an RS2 emerger
type pattern works well. I generally fish them on a dropper under a dry
generally dead drifted but sometime the fish will key in on a swing.
However, a skittering fly generally doesn't work. When they feeding on
top, sometimes they key in on emergers in the film and sometimes on the
duns. You can usually see if they're taking duns by following some duns
on the surface and see if they're taken or ignored. Unless there's wind
pushing them around, they usually want a totally dead drifted fly. The
three types of flies I fish on top are CDC comparaduns, parachutes and
standard hackled dries.

Willi