The olive jig is one of my favourite nymph patterns. I’ve found it effective on my local river in the early stages of the trout season and it is responsible for my personal best wild river brownie. 

When I first started fly tying only about 3 years ago,  I use to spend my evenings searching the internet in search of patterns I could attempt. Whilst watching YouTube videos I stumbled across well known angler and brilliant fly tyer Steffan Jones, and his Olive Jig Nymph after seing his creation i wanted to attempt the pattern. 

I took to my vice and set about to tie the nymph, The first few weren’t brilliant but  put them in my box and took them to try on the river. As all fly tyers know, the joy of catching a fish on a fly you’ve tied never gets old. 

It wasn’t until I was tying at my first fly tying event at Fly Only in Huddersfield where i was talking to highly experienced angler and fly tyer Alex Jardine. He suggested to add an orange tag to the fly which made it look even more appealing ( if your a trout!) 

So here’s a step by step on how I tie my version of the Olive Jig. 

Materials used;

Hook – Partridge of Redditch jig hook #18 

Thread – UNI -thread 8/0 camel (or brown) 

Bead – slotted tungsten 3.0

Tail 1 – glo Brite – orange

Tail 2 – Coq De Leon fibres 

Body – trans brite (olive) 

Thorax – hares ear (the really spikey bits!!) 
Step 1 – 

Pop the bead onto the hook and secure it in your vice. 

Step 2 – 

Set your thread off and secure the bead in place so it doesn’t move about. 

Step 3 – 

Run the thread down the hook, stopping just befor the bend. At this point catch in the glo brite. 

Step 4 – 

I like to cut off the glo brite at this point leaving a tag end, not too big though! 

Step 5 – 

Step 5 is adding tail 2, the Coq De Leon fibres, I like to use 5/6 of them, you don’t need too many as Coq De Leon is lovely and robust! 

Step 6 – 

Take your tying thread back up towards the bead of the eye where you can catch in the trans brite. 

Step 7 – 

At this point I take the 1 strand of trans brite and wind it down with touching turns until I reach the bottom, where I work my way back up creating a nice tapered body to the fly. As Steffan notes in his video,  the more times you go over with trans brite the darker it gets as it’s a transparent material so you can taper the fly to get darker as your working your way back towards the bead. 

Step 8 – 

The fly is almost done. All that is left to do is add the thorax, for this I use the spikiest hears ear dubbing I can find, gathering some (not too much) and dubbing it onto the tying thread. Then winding it around to create a spiky thorax. 

Step 9 – whip finish and add a dab of varnish to secure the thread. At this point you could tease out some of the dubbing. And it’s done! Ready to fish! 

Thanks to Steffan Jones and Alex Jardine with your helpful advice on this patten that is a proven fish catcher! 
Tight lines. I’m