The fly box · No. 06 of 36
Greenwell’s Glory
Olive duns of several species, from the large dark olive to the medium olive.
- Kind
- Dry
- Hook sizes
- 12–16
- Season
- Spring, summer, autumn
- For
- Trout and grayling
- At the vice
- A moderate tie
The dressing
| Hook | Standard dry fly, barbless or barb flattened, sizes 12–16 |
|---|---|
| Thread | Primrose yellow silk or 8/0 thread, well waxed with dark wax until it turns olive |
| Tail | Furnace or Greenwell cock hackle fibres |
| Body | The waxed tying silk itself, in close flat turns |
| Rib | Fine gold wire |
| Hackle | Furnace or Greenwell cock (ginger with a dark centre) |
| Wing | Paired slips of starling primary, upright and split; the original wet used hen blackbird |
Tying it
- Wax the yellow silk thoroughly and run it to the bend.
- Tie in the tail fibres and the gold wire.
- Wind the silk forward in flat touching turns to make a slim body.
- Rib with four or five open turns of wire and tie off.
- Tie in matched starling slips upright, a quarter of the shank back from the eye, and separate them.
- Wind three or four turns of hackle behind and in front of the wings.
- Whip finish and varnish.
Fishing it
Whenever olives are hatching, which on most rivers means the middle of the day in spring and autumn and the cooler ends of the day in summer. Present it upstream to rising fish on 5X (0.15 mm) with no drag at all. The old wet dressing still earns its place too, fished across and gently down through riffles on a team of two. On cold April days with a north wind, the wet will often outfish the dry.
Where it comes from
In May 1854 Canon William Greenwell of Durham, fishing the Tweed, asked James Wright of Sprouston to dress a fly to his description. Wright’s original was a winged wet: blackbird wing, waxed yellow silk, coch-y-bonddu hackle. The dry version given here keeps the essential thing, primrose silk darkened to olive with wax and ribbed with gold, and adds a tail and upright wings.