Don’t Overlook the Olives

As we prepared to fish a little Pennsylvania Spring Creek Vince Marinaro looked me straight in the eye and strongly encouraged, “Don’t overlook the little olives, just never overlook the little olives”.  He was referring to the little beatis mayflies.

Although this was many years ago the beatis became one of my favorite hatches to fish.  For example, the following fall I took three of my angling friends into the Yellowstone River just down stream from Livingstone, Montana.  An early snowstorm moved in and triggered a very heavy beatis hatch.  These fellows caught one large rainbow after another on Mr. Rapidan Parachute Dry size 18.

Here in the east this is a great hatch in the fall on heavily overcast days.  Due to the small size of the duns I’ll often spot some rising trout before I actually see the flies.

During the early part of the hatch each day you can catch many nice trout on the Mr. Rapidan Olive Soft Hackle size 16 by fishing them upstream dead drift beside the grass beds and undercut banks.  Once the hatch is in full swing I switch over to drys and go one on one with rising trout using BWO size 18, Beatis Parachute size 18 and Mr. Rapidan Parachute size 18.