James Leisenring’s Dark Olive Nymph is sure to be popular among the finned set. For starters, it’s buggy as hell. Not only does it cover the pre-emergent Blue Winged Olive family, it’s also one of those flies that looks like lots of bugs in general, but not necessarily any one in particular. That’s the good news. The flip side — if I may editorialize — is that I suspect a soft-hackled Pheasant Tail does the same duty, and is easier to tie. One way to find out!
Leisenring’s Dark Olive Nymph
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Hook: 14, 15
Silk: Primrose yellow
Hackle: One or not more than two turns of the tiniest blue dun hen’s hackle.
Tail: Two or three very short, soft blue dun cock fibers.
Rib: Fine gold wire.
Body: Dark green-olive seal’s fur mixed with a little dark-brown bear’s fur (found next to the skin) spun lightly at the tail and quite heavily at the shoulder or thorax.
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Tying notes: It should take me a few minutes to bang out Leisenring’s Dark Olive Nymph; when it takes longer than that to tie in the bloody “very short” tail, I curse my lot in fly tying and pine for the simplicity of the soft-hackled pheasant tail nymph. At this size, Angora goat (my standard seal’s fur substitute) would be an unruly mess. And since I’m right out of bear, I made the command decision to use Squirrel SLF Spikey Dubbing, dark olive and dark brown. I’m pleased with the results. A single dubbing loop for both abdomen and thorax.
currentseams.com 
you know, read your input every day, tired of seeing heart attack warnings, how to flip a house,
and I certainly don’t need to read about back end developers, your content is great your ads suck
Hi James, thanks for your comment. My decision to include ads was not an easy one. Currentseams is a lot of work — I spend dozens of hours a week creating content –and domain names and web hosting and business entity taxes are not free. So when there’s an opportunity to monetize the site, I have to consider it to help defray costs. If it makes you feel any better, I’m not crazy about them either, nor am I raking in dough. Option B is make currentseams a members-only pay-for-view site, and I wasn’t willing to go down that road. I hope that helps, and I appreciate your readership.
yes and I understand – just too bad – I will continue to follow, in closing I don’t know where to get black bear hair from close to the skin, they wont stand still long enough.
I get it. I really do. I appreciate your honesty and your readership. To be honest sometimes I notice them and other times they just blend in. Too funny about the bear fur!
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