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Crowe Beetle

Rusty Dunn Crowe Beetle

Fountains of Youth – Classic trout flies that have withstood the test of time … flies that remain “forever young”

by Rusty Dunn

A mid-summer day in the late 1940s begins like many others in Pennsylvania’s fertile Cumberland Valley.  A young Vince Marinaro fishes the crystalline wa­ters of Letort Spring Run.  The day is brilliantly sunny, and as the heat builds, so does Marinaro’s frustration.  Insects are seemingly nonexistent, yet many fine trout rise stead­ily in the creek’s weedy channels. 

The riseforms are slow and deliberate, leav­ing only the faintest hint of a ring.  Marinaro has spent several days trying to decipher what the rising trout feed upon.  He casts a box full of dries, wets, and nymphs with little success.  He fishes atop the sur­face, in the sur­face, under the surface, and near the bottom.  Noth­ing.  He gives his flies a little twitch or a slow retrieve.  Still nothing.  He casts to a dozen steady risers, and one-by-one they stop feeding.  Marinaro’s frus­tration finally boils over.  He quits fish­ing, sets his rod aside, lays flat on the ground, and crawls like a spi­der to the water’s edge.  Perched within inches of the surface, he intently scans for signs of life.  Noth­ing.  After a few minutes of hyp­notic study, though, he begins to see things.  Tiny things.  Insects he had initially overlooked.  Tiny may­fly duns struggling to shed their nym­phal skins, bee­tles smaller than he thought pos­si­ble, and tiny little leaf­hop­pers.  Marinaro is stunned by the minia­ture world be­fore his eyes, revealed suddenly as if a curtain had been raised and the stage lights switched on.  He hur­ries to a nearby fishing hut, finds a mesh bag, fashions a work­able seine, and returns to the stream to seine the current.  The net is alive with tiny insects.  Bee­tles no more than 3/32″ long; winged and wing­less red ants so small that their slender waists are nearly in­visible; unimaginably small mayfly nymphs and emerging duns; tiny green leafhoppers about 1/8″ long; little inchworms fallen from the trees; and black ants, unseen at the surface be­cause they drift under­water.  Marinaro’s day ended in won­derment, for he had dis-­
covered the world of tiny ter­restrials.

The classic angling literature frequently discussed ter­restrial insects that fall or are blown into trout streams, but their importance as late sea­son trout fare was rarely emphasized.  As the hatches of spring de­cline, aquatic insects become increasingly scarce, and terrestri­als can sustain trout for months.  Mari­naro described his day of discovery on the Letort in his 1950 book A Modern Dry Fly Code, in which he devoted about a third of the contents to terres­trials and their imi­tation.  Marinaro’s Jassid pattern is an excel­lent imitation of small beetles, but it was never very popu­lar.  Jassids re­quire jungle cock nails, an exotic bird spe­cies whose feathers have always been rare and expensive.  The scarcity of jungle cock made the Jassid itself an endangered species.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvanian John Crowe was a con­temporary of Mari­naro’s from the nearby steel town of Johnstown, PA.  Crowe fished many of the same streams as Marinaro and designed an affordable bee­tle imitation that is still popular today.  It is a model of simplicity and was first described in Crowe’s 1947 book The Book of Trout Lore.  Marinaro’s Jassid was a blue-blooded fly in­tended for fly fish­ing’s cogno­scenti.  John Crowe’s beetle was a blue-collared fly in­tended for fly fish­ing’s rank and file.  Both are first rate flies, but Crowe Beetles won’t break the bank.

Fish a Crowe Beetle anytime from early summer to season’s end, especially along grassy banks and near over­hanging trees.  The fly can be dif­ficult to see, but a spot of paint or a tuft of bright yarn tied over the back aids visibility.  Crowe Beetles are frag­ile, but don’t be concerned when they become tattered; they fish even better that way.  Many accomplished an­glers maintain that Crowe Bee­tles are more effective than the ubiquitous and wildly popular foam beetles.  Foam bee­tles float well, are easy to see, and are dura­ble, but they are soul­less gobs of synthetics.  When the weather warms and the ter­restrials of summer come calling, fish with passion.  Fish with history.  Fish with John Crowe’s steel town beetle.

Copyright 2019, Rusty Dunn


Crowe Beetle

Rusty Dunn Crowe Beetle

To imitate shiny green beetles, wrap an underbody of peacock herl or dub an underbody of sparkly dark green dubbing.

Hook: Dry fly, #14 – #20
Thread: Black, 8/0 or 6/0
Body: Deer hair, dyed black, lashed to the hook shank and pulled over to form a rounded oval shape; trim to leave a prominent head.
Legs: Three hair fibers on each side, snipped at the tail and pulled out sideways