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Fly Fishing the Blue Winged Olive Fly
The Blue-winged Olive: General Information
Blue-Winged Olives that are found in most of the streams in the USA are of the Beatis genus of the Baetidae family of mayflies. There are many species however, and they make up a great deal of the trout’s natural food. These tiny but important aquatic insects are found in the moving waters and will not live in still waters. They are usually in the eddies and calm pockets along the banks, just where you might expect to find brown trout.
Their hatch can last for a longer period of time than most other mayflies; in fact, they may have more than one generation in a year, beginning in the late winter and continuing thru the seasons until the fall hatches occur. It is even possible to have two or more hatches of different species of the blue winged olives occurring at the same time on the same stream. These various hatches may overlap each other so that you might find duns and spinners on the same stream at the same time.
The weather and the day time temperature affects the hatches in a couple of ways. First, the hatches will slow down in the warmer months of summer and then increase in the temperature cools down. Also, when hatches occur in the cooler months, they tend to hatch during the warmest times of the day, usually around noon. As you might expect, in the warmer months, the hatches usually start occurring around mid-morning and slowing down in the late afternoon.
As a rule, the hatches usually last longer on cloudy, overcast days, and stormy, rainy, or snowy days. These hatches usually produce the largest hatches. When the blue winged olive hatches occur they take over the trout’s eating at that point in time. The trout will feed hungrily on these BWOs while avoiding other insects that they might otherwise be feeding on. This can deceive some anglers who are not observant.
Generally there is not much variation in the colors but the sizes can vary a great deal with the smaller flies most often found early in the year. We at TroutUniversity offer West Fork Anglers Blue Winged Olives in hook sizes of 14 thru 20 due to that size variance.
See the new double sided fly boxes.
