
Olive Trout Fin
Hook: Standard wet fly hook, size #2 to #10
Thread: White Danville Flymaster 6/0 for body, black for head
Tag: Flat silver tinsel – fine size French or #16/18 Mylar
Tail: Narrow sections of duck or goose wing quill – 2 barbs each of white, black, and red; married to and topping slightly wider orange
Rib: Flat narrow silver tinsel
Body: Olive floss
Hackle: Black
Wing: Narrow sections of duck or goose wing quill – 2 barbs each of white, black, and red; married to and topping remainder of orange
Head: Black

The High Priestess wet fly - an original classic design by Don Bastian. This hook is a #6 vintage Mustad 3399 Sproat Bend Wet Fly Hook.
High Priestess
Hook: Standard wet fly hook #4 to #8
Thread: White Danville Flymaster 6/0. Use white due to the orange floss tag. All colors of floss except black should be wrapped over a white thread base. From the perspective of fishing flies, floss over white thread retains truer colors when wet. This is especially true on light colors like orange, yellow, pink, light blue, etc. but even on dark colors like red, brown, purple – floss over black thread gets very dark when wet. Wet floss over white thread retains its true colors.
Tag: Orange floss
Tail: Orange, guinea fowl, dark blue, married
Rib: Yellow floss – you can see it is twisted and resembles wire. Twist the floss first by hand, this enables you to then grasp it with hackle pliers. Increase the twist more efficiently with hackle pliers – use a clockwise for right-handed tiers. This is because the twist will increase by 1/2 turn with each wrap. You don’t want the floss rib to untwist as you wind it. Lefty’s- reverse the procedure.
Body: Black floss
Hackle: Yellow
Wing: Narrow sections – 2 barbs each – of yellow and dark blue duck or goose wing quill, married to and topping yellow
Cheek: Kingfisher
Head: Black
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Goodness Don I don’t know how I missed this one – What a beauty the High Priestess is!!
H Alec;
Boy, you must have really felt the urge to get out your archeological tools! This entry goes back to April of 2010, not long after I crated the High Priestess and first started this blog. I appreciate your “archival interest! I need to tie some of these up…this is thus far, the only specimen of this pattern that I’ve produced.
Thanks so much for your compliment!
Cheers, friend! 🙂