Olive Stimulator       

Hook:    Tiemco TMC 200R # 8 - 16 

Thread:   Olive Green 6/0 

Tail/Wing: Olive Deer Hair

Rib: Thin Wire; Copper or Gold

Body: 2 Sections Peacock Herl, 1 Section Olive Dubbing

Hackles: Olive Grizzle

Head: Peacock Herl

1/ Tie in your thread just behind the hook eye. Lay a bed of thread extending back to the rear of the hook. The point at which you stop is dependant on how much of a curve you want in the body but a good rule of thumb with these flies is equal to the barb of the hook. Going much further than this results in less hook ups in our experience.
2/ Take a small section of deer hair. Cut it away from the skin and roughly stack them in your fingers allowing the tips to gently fall through your grip and sit flat on your bench. Don't worry about getting them perfect we just want to get it approximately even. In other words keep using your deer hair stacker as a paper weight! Tie in as shown with the tail length roughly equal in length to the hook gape.
3/ Once this has been secured with several wraps of thread and you haven't let the deer hair spin, trim the excess as close to the hook shank as possible. Take a piece of wire to be used as the rib and now tie it in at the rear of the fly as shown. Secure this, cut off any excess and then pull it out of the way to the rear of the hook.
4/ Next up, select a piece of peacock herl. Try and get something bushy. When buying herl always try and get the entire feather rather than the pre-strung variety and the latter is almost always inferior in quality and trying to get a fly to look the same as the ones you are copying from books, videos and sites like ours is next to impossible with poor quality herl. Tie in and trim the excess herl.
5/ Gently grasp the herl between your thumb and forefingers of your right hand (right handed tier) and start winding a bushy, herl body. Wind in a clockwise direction around the shank and forward building the first body section as you go. Build up to about the 1/3 mark to the hook eye but once again don't worry too much about being specific. Tie off and trim.
6/ Apply some olive dubbing to your tying thread as shown. This is easily dun and we would suggest a soft underfur for those new to dubbing, rabbit fur for instance is soft and will dub very easy. Others may like to try some of the shiny artificial Antron types materials just for that little bit of sparkle when viewed from below and wet.
7/ Now wind a section of dubbing approx half the size of the previous body section. This is very similar to the Royal Stimulator or Royal Wulff and their famous red banding. Once again this is not entirely necessary and a full dubbed body (no peacock herl) appears to work just as well in this instance). Complete this middle body section and move onto step 8 of the tying progress.
8/ Now take another peacock herl feather, just as we did earlier. Try to select a bushy one again to get a nice balanced look to the fly. Tie in and out of the way as shown. That is tie the herl up and to the rear of the fly. Although we are not going to require this to be out of the way this time, it is good to get used to tying in materials so that they are out of the way of later steps.
9/ Wind a second section of herl as we did in the previous steps. This time however make it the same size as the dubbed section of body. That way we have a 1/ Section 1 herl 1/3 hook shank length 2/ Section 2 dubbing 1/6 hook shank length Section 3/ Section 3 herl 1/6 hook shank length. This is allows us a nice amount of space to put in a good hackle. Something necessary considering the water we need this to float in.
10/ So you have the body sections completed and now must tie in the hackle for the palmer section. Select one that has barbules between 75% to 125% the length of the hook gape. You can see in the photo below what we mean. The individual hackle points should be either the length of the hook gape, distance between hook shank and hook point or a little either end of this length. Tie in on far side and dull side facing you.
11/ Wind the hackle back over the top of the fly body until you reach the rear of the hook where the wire is located. Take between 3-5 turns to reach this point and again wind clockwise around the shank. When you get there use the wire to hold the hackle in place. Use up to half a dozen turns of wire to SECURE the hackle. This keeps the fly together so make sure you get it right. Click for full size pic to see more clearly.
12/ Here comes the fiddly part. We have to wrap the wire up to the front of the body sections and the thread location. This will also reinforce the 'palmered' hackle over the body. Try and go in the opposite direction to the way you wrapped the thread as this will allow better bite and make it stronger. Slowly wind forward being careful to not crush the hackle points. When you reach the front, tie off and trim the excess.
13/ Now take your scissors as we are going to give this fly a bit of a haircut. Perhaps not as drastic a style as the Miss Knobby X but a cut nevertheless. Trim the hackle flat on top of the hook shank to facilitate the correct positioning of the wing. Don't trim the sides or underside as this is only to help the wing sit correctly.
14/ Grab another bunch of deer hair, this time an amount about equal in diameter to a biro. Again stack these in your fingers on the bench top to get the points even.  Tie in as shown with the wing extending over the fly body. We would advise the length to be no greater than the hook and no shorter than the body sections. Be careful not to spin the hair. Pinch hard between thumb and forefinger of your left hand to be sure.
15/ Select another hackle, this time a little larger than the first one. Again remind yourself that this fly needs to float in the roughest of water and for long periods. Tie the hackle in as before, dull side towards you and extending to the rear of the hook. Trim any excess and add a couple of turns for strength. A half hitch doesn't go astray here either.
16/ Now grab another piece of peacock herl. Tie in as shown just in front of the hackle in the previous step. Trim any excess and move the thread to the front of the hook, just behind the eye. This herl will help create a nice sized head underneath the hackle.
17/ Wind the herl clockwise around the hook shank and build up a short head section. While this doesn't seem important it does give the fly a nice bulk to it that a hackle only front section can sometimes lack. We would advise anyone tying this for the South Island to put in a reasonably thick section of herl. Wind forward and clockwise until you reach the thread. Tie off, add a half hitch and trim excess.
18/ Complete the fly by winding a dense hackle. Use at least 5 turns and as many as 8 to get the desired effect. Wind forward and clockwise over the herl section and finish at the hook eye. Tie off and add a half hitch to lock it in place. Then trim the excess and add two more half hitches to complete. And there you have it, the Olive Stimulator.

We have brought this pattern to you to try and rescue you all, well us really, from the depths of winter. While the calendar says it should be cold, winter really has not arrived and we are still thinking of recently completed South Island trips and the upcoming ones next season. So put down that Zonker Strip and those bead chain eyes! Grab your deer hair, put on your wading boots and polaroids and tie a few Stimulators! The time for stalking large browns down South is again not too far away.

The Pattern

I would say it is just another Stimulator but then I would have to slap myself. It is perhaps better described as 'another successful stimulator variant'! What more needs to be said about this style of fly before people catch on. Finally some anglers in Australia are getting the point but we are a long way behind our compatriots in the USA where the Stimulator has been one of the most successful flies ever. Have a look in Australia's Best Trout Flies and see how many times it appears! How many you ask? None, Nada, Zilch, Zippo, not even a variant! That is amazing seeing as though it would be one of the most successful all round patterns we have ever used in such a multitude of very differing waters.

We have been using this fly as guides for over seven seasons and although there are no real 'secret/magic patterns' out there, this fly is about as close as you can get to this sort of mythical status. The number of times we have pulled fish out of undercut banks or brought them up in a heavy seam or had it slashed in the fastest water or examined warily by a South Island brown before being eaten are too numerous to mention. While we are slowly getting more and more people to use it, either  through experiences while guiding with us or because of our online reports, the majority of anglers out there have not tried one.

This variation of the Stimulator, the Olive Stimmie, has brought us a lot of success on the South Island. Heading down South to the Wanaka, Queenstown and Te Anau each summer we need a good pattern that can be taken either as a large attractor or Cicada imitation. This fly fits the bill and outperforms the rest when these are the main criteria. In faster rivers like the Hawea where fish must sometimes move long distances in fast water to take a dry, this and the Miss Knobby X in the larger sizes are very successful flies. On the smaller rivers in and around Mossburn and around to Te Anau it is deadly when fished on about a #14-16, dead drift over a sighted fish. Also blind fishing it along highly undercut banks will bring great rewards with large fish coming out to pluck it from the top. In slightly rippled water I have not seen it refused and on one day saw it take 6 fish, all between 6 - 9 pounds in a matter of hours.

While this fly is not the be all and end all it has proven its worth time and again when other patterns have failed. We would recommend that you carry a good supply of these and the 'traditional' Royal Stimulator at all times when on the South Island of New Zealand.