fly tying

Here is a super easy blue winged olive pattern from Orvis News. The thing I love about this video is how simple this fly is to tie. After having entertained myself with a lot of complicated fly tying recipes, I’ve definitely settled on the less-is-more approach. The basic steps in this video are similar to how I tie just about all of my dry flies now, the exceptions being Royal Wulffs, Patriots and Stimulators. Basically, if it’s a Catskill type of dry fly, this is how I do it. I even “cheat” on things like an Adams. Instead of using some feather tips I just use some synthetic material like Z-Lon or whatever I have lying around that will be visible when the fly is floating in the current — much faster to tie and I don’t think the fish have any idea it’s not a “textbook” pattern on the top.