Olive Mallard Spey,

Olive Mallard Spey Feathers

Olive is the color of things fish eat every day: leeches, stonefly nymphs, sculpins, damsels. When the bright flies aren’t working and the fish have seen it all, olive looks like dinner.

Twelve jumbo olive mallard spey feathers per pack, picked one at a time for steelhead, salmon and big-trout tiers. Wrap them as collars on leeches and swing nymphs, or use them as legs and wings on stonefly patterns. The barring under the olive dye gives you natural segmentation without extra steps at the vise.

No short feathers, no broken tips, all 12 usable.

Recipe 1: Olive Soft-Hackle Leech

• Hook: Size 2 to 6 trailer hook on a 35 mm shank, or a 3XL streamer hook
• Thread: Olive 6/0
• Tail: Olive marabou with two strands of copper flash
• Body: Olive-brown Ice Dub
• Hackle: Olive Mallard Spey, palmered through the body
• Collar: Two turns of Olive Mallard Spey, then one turn of black schlappen
• Head: Olive, with a small tungsten bead or cone if you need depth

How to fish it: A low-and-clear water fly for steelhead and a year-round fly for big trout. Fish it on a sink tip, swinging slow along the bottom of the run. In stillwater or slow pools, strip it with long, slow pulls and pauses. Leeches don’t sprint.

Recipe 2: Olive Stonefly Swing Nymph

• Hook: Size 4 to 8 3XL nymph hook
• Thread: Brown 6/0
• Weight: Lead-free wire wraps, eight to ten turns
• Tail: Two brown goose biots, split
• Abdomen: Olive and brown dubbing blended, ribbed with olive V-rib or Larva Lace
• Wing case: Mottled turkey or Thin Skin, in two segments
• Thorax: Olive-brown hare’s ear dubbing
• Legs: Olive Mallard Spey fibers, tied in on each side of the thorax
• Collar: One sparse turn of Olive Mallard Spey

How to fish it:

Steelhead remember stoneflies from their days as juveniles. Fish this one on a sink tip and swing it through riffles and pocket water, or dead-drift it under an indicator and let it swing up at the end of the drift. In Montana, it’s a pre-hatch killer for big browns in the weeks before the salmon flies show up.