Spring creeks, like DePuy’s in Livingston MT, are famously known for their large populations of healthy, well-fed large trout and a corresponding amount of insect life. Foremost among these is the Pale Morning Dun (PMD), shown below.
The PMDs hatch in great numbers May through July, peaking in early June, during morning hours, typically, 8:00 12:00 A.M.. Looking up or downstream at these times one would see fishermen, spaced every 100 feet or so, wading the stream fly casting to rising trout …… frequently with arched rod, tight line, and splashing fish.
In a visit to the stream just after lunch one would see many fewer anglers, and very few rises. In fact, the stream surface might be dead still several hundred yards up and down stream. It apparently is siesta time.
What to do? Drift weighted nymphs? Work streamers?>No, No. I want to fish a dry fly!
Well, how about a terrestrial, like a beetle or ant that might occasionally fall into the stream?
I pulled out my fly box with ants and beetles, small, medium and large…..chose a medium size beetle and tied it on to my 12 foot , 5x tapered leader, adding a bright 1/4 inch diameter fluorescent red strike indicator about 4 feet from the beetle..,… otherwise the little black beetle would be impossible to track as it floated downstream in the film., 40 – 50 feet away from my casting position.
Bingo! Fish on! Nice rainbow netted and released. A few moments later, Bingo again! and moments later another!,,,, a cutthroat and a brown!
Appreciating this extraordinary phenomenon and wanting to be able to repeat I stopped fishing the beetle pattern in order to examine it in detail, lest I lose it on a stream snag or a fish breaking it off, without knowing exactly what I was catching them on. Since I tied all the flies in my box and was lax in my markings I could not simply go back to my fly pattern recipe or order more from the same fly shop. So, I carefully dissected this same fly that caught all the fish. The dissection steps appear below the first illustration, the beetle pattern before dissection.
The first step in the beetle fly dissection:
Three sets of legs made from fine rubber bands are shown in addition to the folded over back member which is a foam body “cut” from 2 mm thick foam stock. (Actually the body is not “cut, ” rather it is formed using a brass wing burner template, reshaped to create a body in lieu of wings. the resultant burnt body, quite interestingly, develops a very desirable sheen. )
The second step in the Beetle fly dissection:
This beetle pattern is designed to float high on the water.In addition to a plump foam body there is additional floatation from two small balsa wood outriggers which widen the profile of the fly to look more beetle-like.
Instructions for tying the fly appear on the page, DePuy Killer Beetle .