by PhilA » Tue Apr 14, 2015 1:31 pm
Scott,
Your Forked-Tail Nymph tied with ostrich is indeed handsome. A very beautiful tie! On most Forked-Tail Nymphs tied today, the white biot wings curve toward the body, but you've tied them as the Don and Dick Olsen original -- curving away from the body. Nice.
I've never read a description of how Doug Prince came to tie his namesake nymph, but I've often wondered whether he knew of the earlier Olsen patterns. I don't think those Olsen recipes were ever published, however, prior to Prince tying similar, if not identical, flies. Forked-Tail Nymphs were local favorites around Bemidji, MN, where the Olsens lived. Whether Doug Prince, who lived in Monterey, CA, knew about the Olsen patterns seems lost in history.
One thing is clear, however. Doug Prince is not responsible for the name "Prince Nymph". Prince called his nymphs "Forked-Tail Nymphs", just like the Olsen flies. Skip Morris in his book The Art of Tying the Nymph says that Prince tied versions both with ostrich and peacock herl. (Black and Brown Forked-Tail Nymphs, respectively.) The name "Prince Nymph" was given by Buz Buszek (of Buz Buszek Award fame of the Federation of Fly Fishers). Buszek owned a very successful mail-order fly business in Visalia, CA from the 1940s - 1960s. He and Doug Prince were friends, and Prince tied flies commercially for Buszek for a brief period. Prince supplied Forked-Tail Nymphs to the business.
Doug Prince described Buszek's naming of the fly on the occasion of Prince's acceptance of the 1981 Buz Buszek Award. He says that Buszek was in a rush to put together a catalog one day and wanted to include the peacock-bodied nymph that Prince had tied and fished with great success. But Buszek couldn't remember the name "Forked-Tailed Nymph". Instead, he hastily put the fly into his published catalog as the "Prince Nymph". The name stuck, because Buszek's business was quite significant nationally.
