For no particular reason I just keep tying small flies. But this summer I noticed that the biodiversity in my fly box was a little low. I did not know what species missed, till that summer evening. In the middle of a very low Semois river, I stalked across the river to a large over hanging Alder tree with a nice pool and beaver burrow below. Just missing the low branches, my sedge pattern kissed the water surface and was grabbed by a nice chub. The smart fish immediately took shelter under a large lump of water crowfoot. Walking up there -disturbing the pool- and releasing the fish was the only thing left to do. With my head in the branches, I suspected that more fly fishermen must have tried there luck in this spot and being not so lucky. So I inspected the branches for flies. And yes, I found a nice one....a beetle. It was nicely tied so I kept it as a souvenir. Later that evening at a campfire I spoke another fly fisher about catching Ide in the IJssel river. He recommended black beetles. With these signs, I had to do something with these terrestrials. So the beetles newly arrived on my fly tying bucket list.
In these dark wet days just before new years day I stayed indoors going through my FF&FT magazines. There it was in the august issue (2017): a nice article of Charles Jardin about a beetle pattern from Toby Merigan (Funky Fly Tying). A useful tie-trick was using a lenghtways cut foam cilinder as the back shield for the beetle. I had to try this.
The next step in designing a eclectic terrestrial was scanning my favourite Youtube and Vimeo channels for other cunning ideas:
The Leetle Beetle by Fly Fish Food was the most appealing pattern. Good triggers, not to complex and a nice design.So I tuned the chassis of that fly a little by (see picture below):
the cut in half foam cylinder as a back (had only brown left, and a black marker pen);
adding a silver crystal bead at the bud to mimic an air bubble;
Using spanflex for legs (had nothing else) and splitting the front pair to make 6 legs in total;
Bending the legs a little using a hot needle.
Hopefully this terrestrial will work on Chub and Ide next year (only a few hours away).
