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Woolly Bugger (Olive)

A streamer, tied #2–12, carried year round. It is tied against 5 named insects in this book, and stands in when nothing is hatching — all year.

A weighted streamer tied entirely in olive, this is the clear-water version of a fly carried all season, and it works best smaller and lighter than seems necessary. It rides a 3X long streamer hook in sizes 2 through 12, on olive 6/0 thread, with a tail of olive marabou and flash, a body of olive chenille, and grizzly hackle dyed olive palmered the length of it. Lead wire or a cone supplies the weight. The colour is the colour of everything green in a river, which suits clear water and weedy water. It stands in for a cranefly larva, Tipula spp., through April to June and again September to October at water temperatures of 40 to 65 degrees, and for a sculpin, Cottus spp., all year from 33 to 72 degrees. It is also a searching pattern for trout, smallmouth bass and steelhead when nothing is hatching.

What it looks like

A drawing, not a photograph, and not traced from one. Its proportions were read off 5 independent reference photographs of the pattern and written down as 5 measured characteristics — wing angle, tail length against the shank, how far a hackle fibre reaches — every one of which had to hold across more than one of them before it could be drawn. What survives across many photographs of a fly is the fly.

The Woolly Bugger in the colour that passes for a damsel nymph or a small crayfish. Same shape, same movement — the olive is what makes it a weed-bed fly rather than a night fly. Drawn at #8 — 23.3 mm of shank and 7.0 mm of gape on a Tiemco 100.
#2#4#6#8#10#1210 mm
The bare hook at every size this pattern is tied in, all to the same scale. There is no industry standard behind a hook number, so these are Tiemco 100 measurements and another maker's 2 will differ a little.

What it imitates

Each of these is the same hatch record the app's own panel reads, so a pattern recommended on a river card in the app is recommended for one of the insects below.

It is also tagged for no hatch at all — a searching pattern.

Tying recipe

In tying order. This dressing is the standard one — these patterns have been in the publicrecord for decades — and materials substitute freely: the proportions and the silhouette are the pattern, not the brand of dubbing.

Hook3X long streamer hook, sizes 2–12
ThreadOlive 6/0
TailOlive marabou and flash
BodyOlive chenille
HackleGrizzly dyed olive, palmered
WeightLead wire or cone

When to fish it

The same fly in the colour of everything green in the river. Clear water, weedy water.

Carried all year. The insects it matches are active all year, in water from 33°F to 78°F.

Target species

Rivers it fishes well

Rivers with a page here that sit in the regions where the insects this pattern imitates are recorded. It is a claim about coverage, not a report of a fish caught.

Related patterns

Same type of fly, or tied for the same insects.

Open the trout map →Every trout stream near you, coloured by today's water temperature.