Finding a Blue-Winged Olive hatch in the winter is usually a simple matter.  Blue-Winged Olives tend to hatch in earnest from mid-January on, so the odds of finding the insects on the water are in your favor.

That being said, don’t expect to find a fantastic hatch every day during the winter.  In fact, be ready to find nothing more than a few insects flying around.  The Blue-Winged Olives can be tricky.

Blue-Winged Olives hatch best on overcast, wet, unpleasant days.  Get ready to be miserable out there to fish the very best hatches.  But if the fish are large enough, you won’t even notice the weather, right?

The best hatches of the winter occur in February, but the Blue-Winged Olives begin to get more active in mid-January.  Always have some Blue-Winged Olive patterns (both nymphs and dries) with you when you go fishing in the winter.

Usually, the Blue-Winged Olives start hatching in the early afternoon and can continue on into the evenings.  Fish nymphs and emergers for the first hour or so before switching to a surface pattern.  Sometimes, espescially during winter, I will fish a nymph for the entire hatch and will do quite well.

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Tags: Bugs: Mayflies - BWO