As you move further into spring and the days start to warm a bit more you will often see huge hatches of black beetles.

In good years they will swarm in their countless thousands around most external light sources, often creating a thick carpet of dead and dying beetles under these lights: walking over them creates a sickly squelchy, crunching sound.

If you are lucky enough to be out on either on a stream or lake when one of these beetle falls is on, you will be in for some great fishing both during the fall and later on as well.

Trout take beetles in quite a leisurely manner, cruising about sipping them down at will. They seem to sense that there is no rush as the poor old beetle is trapped on the water and is not going anywhere soon. It lays in the surface film, legs working slowly as if trying to walk on water waiting for the inevitable, whether that be death by drowning or disappearing into the cavernous maw of a hungry trout.

Beetle fishing in streams is just a matter of finding a feeding lane downstream of bank side vegetation where it is easy for beetles to fall or get blown off into the water, with many naturals on the water it can be a frustrating prospect, but persistence in presentation will often see you successful.

In lakes you have a number of options, the lee shore being your first where you can fish to easily spotted and rising fish in the mirror where the surface has not yet been affected by the wind, heavily timbered shore lines are the go here. The line between the calm water and the beginning of the ripple is another good spot as fish will cruise along looking for the beetles as they hit the water.

Lastly after a heavy orgy of beetle mania the day and night before head for the windward shore the following morning. The wind and wave action will have congregated all the left over beetles in thick carpets along the shore, early morning will often find trout mopping up the leftovers.

This pattern has all the right materials to imitate the ‘dead beetle walking’ The foam back keeps the beetle right in the surface film, the centipede legs give off the right amount of movement and the dubbing has just the right amount of sparkle to give the impression of minute air bubbles trapped on the underside of the body and wing of the beetle.

It is easy to change this pattern from a floater to a sinker if you want to fish an imitation sub surface, just substitute the foam for some black raffia, Scudback or a slip of crow wing feather.