I’m not sure who first introduced me to the idea of fishing beetle imitations. Probably that guy from Virginia that Peter Syka and I met forty-plus years ago in the Lake Yellowstone Hotel dining room after spotting him earlier that day on Pelican Creek while we were raising havoc with the native cutthroats, way back when the creek was still open to fishing. We had never considered beetle patterns as much of an option, at least for trout, although it’s worth noting that we both had something along those lines that we had previously tied, so it’s not as though we were oblivious to the notion. The Virginian, anyway, let on that he’d had himself quite a day, thanks, he said, to a size 10 black beetle, a report we took in stride, because we, too, had been enjoying our fair share of good sport of late. Plus, we were familiar with the type: guys were always coming West, showing up in the park, and going bonkers. Who saw trout like that in Virginia, Toledo, or wherever?
The truth, of course, is that Peter and I weren’t much different, a couple of wannabe trout anglers whenever we could pull our attention away from the surf, usually to encounter a mess of pan-sized brookies we found during backpacking trips into the southern high Sierra. We were awfully impressed with those Yellowstone cutts, as well. The morning after speaking with the Virginian in the hotel dining room, where we treated ourselves to one in-our-minds extravagant meal each trip while we camped elsewhere in the park, we returned to Pelican Creek, and as per some unwritten code, drifted off our separate ways.
Now that I think about it, the best I could actually do that day in the way of a beetle pattern was a rough attempt I’d made at tying the famous Letort Cricket with dyed black deer hair. I say “rough,” because, this far into it, fly tying was something I was just beginning to work at, and my efforts often proved marginal, at best. Also, I generally tried to tie flies that looked like the flies in photos I saw in books or magazines or the flies found in bins at fly shops, not flies that looked like the actual insects themselves, many of which I’d never seen and would not have been able to identify if I did. What the hell is a Letort cricket, anyway?
Still, when I pitched my black concoction into a bend of swift water and allowed it to drift down into the head of a pool, a fish grabbed it. And then later, again. And again. What surprised me most was the hungry reaction to a fly that big, also about a size 10, if I remember right, when up until then we got most of our big fish on small dark nymphs, fished on a greased leader, just beneath the surface, often on a slow downstream swing — nothing particularly sophisticated, but still a heck of a good way to move fish feeding in low, clear water.
Yet here I was suddenly sticking fish, and big ones at that, on a weird ugly terrestrial sort of thing, much bigger, by volume, than the measly nondescript fare I had felt so clever using to fool these trout up to now.
Maybe they knew a thing or two in Virginia, after all.
Following this initial success, however, beetles and the flies that represented them remained, for me, on the periphery. Progress, in fly fishing, can be such a gradual process. I recall reading somewhere, years ago, that Randall Kaufmann claimed he always carried size 10 black beetles for fishing the Deschutes, and I’m pretty sure my favorite terrestrial, which I first tied for the Hamm’s Fork, after some Utah guys said they were getting fish on ant patterns during a stretch of hatchless dog days, was as much a beetle as anything else. But I never really thought much about genuine beetle patterns — at least not until recently, when I found myself peering into a box of dozens of little foam beetles while my guide and I tried to decide which one might replace the beetle I had just lost when a big spring creek brown trout rose and ate it and then took off under a dense mat of weeds, a serious problem for which I had failed to devise an effective solution.
It’s hard to say for sure what’s going on when a fish eats your artificial beetle. I’ve never, ever seen a trout eat a real beetle; I’m not sure I’ve even seen beetles on the water. Readers here know, of course, that I’m often reluctant to make claims about what is allegedly happening when fish eat our flies. Maybe a little foam beetle looks like a giant tick engorged with blood. Yummy. My skepticism, anyway, about any claims regarding trout behavior begins the moment somebody says something about trout or any f ish thinking: “The trout sees the fly and thinks . . .” for instance, or “My new and improved Downey Dunker fools fish into thinking that ”
Now wait a minute. Do you really want to go there? I know I do it all the time, too, but that doesn’t mean I actually believe trout are capable of reasoning or rational thought. Instead, they seem to me to be wild, instinctual creatures, answering to both internal and external stimuli at the level of chemistry or physics, or perhaps through the collaboration of a potent suite of orchestrated senses too profound for our minds to comprehend.
But I wouldn’t call that decision making or thought.
Then again, there’s a growing body of evidence that suggests you and I just think we know what we are doing, that our lives are driven, instead, by impulses fueled at a level we can’t consciously fathom — that most of us, in fact, are incapable of deciding what’s best for ourselves, our loved ones, and as luck would have it, the planet on which we live.
Now where were we?
If you wish to believe that a little foam beetle reminds a trout of something it ate in the past, go right ahead. I just hope another big brown trout says Yes, yet again, to the fly my guide finally plucked from his assorted collection and knotted to the end of my tippet. These trout aren’t easy; I’ve never witnessed such slow, deliberate takes. Tilted upward, nose inches from the fly, eyes seemingly crossed, the trout, when they show, do in fact appear to be thinking about it, trying to decide whether it should risk opening its mouth, munching down on that little dark critter, the one with the giant curved steel appendage hanging down between its legs.
If you’re inclined to believe that trout think, you have to wonder what a trout thinks about that.
No matter what we assume the fly might imitate, the Little Foam Beetle belongs in your fly box for the same reason you should probably keep handy a row of red and green Humpys, a few Stimulators or Royal Wulffs or Royal Trudes, and whatever other small or medium-sized dry flies you search the water with when nothing is showing. A lot of anglers now rely on foam, not deer hair, for this sort of fly, a small Chernobyl Ant, say, or an undersized Fat Albert. Or a Little Foam Beetle. My guess is that all of these patterns, and many others besides, represent more or less the same thing: Something good to eat.
All flies, of course, are only as good as we fish them. On the quiet spring creek where the big brown trout are occasionally cooperative, but never easy, my guide, Gabriel, tells me to strip once, sharply, each time my Little Foam Beetle lands on the water. It’s not the movement he wants. Instead, he claims that one quick tug sinks the forward portion of the tippet, preventing it from lying on the surface and casting a shadow down through the water column, all it takes, he believes, to alert a cautious trout to our unscrupulous ruse.
That’s a fairly sophisticated presentation technique. But it’s exactly the sort of subtle touch I’ve come to believe is the difference between exceptional fly fishers and the rest of us. A beetle is a meaty meal, one that’s bound to draw the attention of any trout keeping watch over a particular stretch of water. But all it takes, I believe, is one too many weird clues, besides that dangling hook, to cross up a trout’s signals and abort its impulse to eat.
But they can get hungry waiting. If there’s nothing hatching, nothing else going on, a Little Foam Beetle might just be the answer.
You may want to think about it.
Materials
Hook: Standard dry fly, size 10 to 14
Thread: Black 8/0
Legs: Black Life Flex
Underbody: Purple Ice Dubbing, or similar
Body: Black 2-millimeter foam
Indicator: Yellow 2-millimeter foam
Tying Instructions
Step 1: Mount the hook in the vise and cover the forward half with thread wraps. Pull out an entire length of Life Flex, Make sure you get the material that lies flat, not the type (it can be labeled the same) that looks as if it just came from the beauty parlor. Fold the Life Flex in half twice. Secure the midpoint of the length of the folded Life Flex to the midpoint of the hook shank. Once you trim the Life Flex, now or later, you should end up with four strands extending as legs from each side of the hook.
Step 2: For the body, cut a strip of foam about the width of the hook gap. You’ll end up playing with the width; beetles come in all sizes. You might also find you like a thicker foam, up to one-eighth of an inch. Taper one end of the foam strip and secure it just aft of the legs, with the foam pointing rearward. Compress the foam completely with tight thread wraps back to the start of the bend of the hook.
Step 3: Advance the thread to a point just forward the legs. Add a small amount of dubbing to the thread. Make three or four wraps of dubbing, creating an underbody “hot spot” that may or may not have any consequence whatsoever as to the efficacy of the fly.
Step 4: Pull the foam forward over the legs and underbody and secure it with several firm thread wraps short of the hook eye. You can clip the excess foam now or following the next step.
Step 5: Secure a flat, narrow piece of yellow foam (or pink foam or other high-visibility color) directly on top of the crease between the body and the head of the fly. Clip the aft end of the foam so that the distances forward and aft of the crease are about the same.
Step 6: Cut the black foam to create a head. Round the corners of the head with your scissors. Pull the head upward and whip finish just behind the hook eye. Add a drop or two of lacquer or your favorite head cement to the final thread wraps.
