Micro Black Cricket for selective fall trout

During the fall months, the water is generally low, making for some spooky trout situations. To make it even more challenging, autumn breezes make it harder to cast larger terrestrial patterns, such as hopper, cricket, ant, and beetle imitations. Piling on an extra challenge for myself is that I usually use 2-weight rods from early fall through the cold season due to the very technical water conditions. 

So, my criteria for a good cricket pattern are as follows: a smaller size hook around a size 16, a fly with little bulk, a fly that can be cast with a 2-weight line on 5x or 6x tippets, and a hook that can uniformly scale the pattern down with varying levels of success. Now, a #16 is by no means a tiny hook, but considering most hopper and cricket patterns are tied on size 12 hooks and bigger, it can potentially be a tedious task. So I'm going to go out on a limb and call this cricket pattern a “micro pattern” on a size 16 short shank hook. This little morsel requires a bit of patience and practice.

Over a decade ago, I posted an entry on my black cricket. I am now posting this entry as a follow-up, as I have further refined this pattern to achieve all the aforementioned criteria. It's a tall order, but it has paid big dividends with some incredible results.

Above photo: a 28" Mad River Brown trout caught on my Micro Black Cricket. A Tiemco 531 #16 short shank wide gape hook. Above the fish is a little CJ Bova bamboo 7' 2wt. (Terenzio silk line, shorty furled leader, fitted with 5 and 6x tippet) that I typically use during the entire fall.

Fig. 1

Using a TMC 531 #16 hook (or a short-shank, wide-gape equivalent), tie in the gold fine XS UTC wire. Then, tie in the black 2mm tapered foam strip, uniform in scale and taper, as shown in the above photo. Straddling both foam and wire, take two black biots and angle them slightly out from the rear of the abdomen. Trim the excess biot ends. Make sure the “Cerci” (the two prongs behind a cricket's abdomen) only extend rearward by about 1/2 cm.

Fig. 2

Using Kapok dubbing for extra floatation, any color is fine, build up a baby 

carrot profiled abdomen. Now, top off the abdomen with Beaver Belly. 

Fig 3.

Wrap gold wire up the length of the abdomen about four or five turns. Pull the foam back and secure it with six wraps of thread.

Fig 4.

Trim the foam excess and only trim so far that you get a slight lip extending up and back at an angle; this will give you a wing case profile. Trim the outside edges at an angle, and chamfer them so they are slightly tapered.

Fig.5

Now, build up using Beaver Belly a slight taper in front of the wing case. This will create a nice transition just below the hook eye for the hackle and antennae to secure to.

Fig. 6

Tie in the antennae using dark teal before tying in the hackle. This will provide more space to manipulate the two teal fibers.

Fig. 7

Tie in black hackle; four to five wraps are more than sufficient. Dub in a head using Beaver Belly just behind the set of antennae. Now whip finish in front of the antennae.

With a bit of practice, this little cricket pattern will come second nature. The problematic aspect of tying this pattern, as I have said many times over the last 25 years of posting patterns, is “scale relationships”. Once you have mastered the cadence of all the size relationships among the parts, the other stuff is simply tying it to the hook. So don't go running into the night screaming just yet. It can be frustrating at first, but practice every day, even if it's just one fly at a time!

~CB's Micro Cricket~

Hook: TMC 531 short shank wide gape hook

Thread: UTC Ultra 70 Black

Body: Kapok (flotation layer) & Black Beaver Belly over dubbing

Ribbing: Gold UTC XL

Wing Case: 2mm black foam

Jumping Legs: Micro knotted black pheasant tail fibers x2

Hackle: Black

Antennae: Teal fibers

For custom orders, please email me directly at cbova@columbus.rr.com

                  Thanks for letting me share ~ Clint    www.cjbovarods.com