October 04, 2022
By Charlie Craven
I have always had a romanticized notion about outdoor writers. As a kid, I faithfully read and re-read every word of every fishing magazine I could lay my hands on. The men that wrote for those magazines were larger than life and were seemingly on a constant string of exotic adventures which they then relayed to their readers with delicate and detailed words and pictures. I imagined days and weeks at a time spent fishing with a few short hours intermixed to type the inevitably fantastical stories out in the evening, usually with a glass of brown liquid at the writer’s elbow.
And so, years ago, when Ross Purnell asked me if I wanted to become the Fly Tyer’s Bench Columnist for this magazine, I jumped at the chance. I stocked up on bourbon, typing paper and cardigans with leather elbow patches and waited for my transformation. I’m still waiting.
The truth of the matter is, I am a serial procrastinator and am typically frantically banging away at these articles at the last minute on a fancy new laptop computer at my home office with no booze in sight. Sitting hunched behind the camera under hot lights to tie the flies I feature and hurriedly editing and revising the tutorials and stories, my notions of the glamourous life of being a magazine columnist have a completely different reality than I expected.
Until now.
I can proudly say that I am at this moment sitting in a lovely little house in Wyoming, typing away on that same fancy laptop, after several days of spectacular fishing and an evening spent among fishing guides casually drinking beer and laughing. I must admit, after nearly ten years of writing this column, this is the first time I have lined things up so well and I’m not afraid to say it makes me smile. I’ve finally made it, but honestly, it’s just too hot out for this damn cardigan so I guess I’ll just cut to the chase.
The Lucky B is the culmination of a fly idea that has been rattling around in my brain for almost thirty years. Back in my guiding days, I would pump one fish’s stomach each day during the summer just to keep track of what was happening or changing and what might be on the menu for the day, and pretty much each day I found a single yellow jacket/paper wasp/mud dauber/winged stinged critter in the belly of nearly every trout.
One.
Never two or three.
One single yellow jacket.
This thought just sort of burbled around in my brain for the past couple of decades and it occurred to me more than once that fish do indeed eat these critters and that I should come up with a pattern to match them. I gave a half assed effort a few different times over the years, but never came up with anything I was really excited about until I started going at it a whole different way.
I had been playing with foam extended bodies tied on a needle, trying to develop an adult cranefly pattern (which has since been perfected and is undoubtedly destined for these pages as well), when it occurred to me that the overlapped foam body had a ton of potential and I set about polishing up the pattern. It took more than a few tries, but I am pretty happy with the result.
I start with a standard, thin sewing needle in the vise and build the abdomen from a strip of foam wrapped over a poly yarn and superglue core. The former existing to allow the body to slide off the needle and the latter to hold it all together once it comes off. Creating the textbook “wasp waist” was a stroke of near genius, if I do say so myself. By adding a stout monofilament articulation point that neatly forms the distinct void between abdomen and thorax, the perfect silhouette of these prolific summertime terrestrials was nailed. From there, a bit of dubbing and a foam strip is combined with some freakishly accurate barred sexi-floss legs and a unique method of forming the mixed color polypropylene macrame yarn wings to finish the fly off. The final artwork on the foam is done using a fine tipped Copic marker, a bit of creativity and a steady hand. The completed pattern floats low with the abdomen and legs dangling and the wings in an easily recognizable wide V shape protruding above the surface. It's buoyant, easy to see and ridiculously realistic and the fish know exactly what it is.
The finished fly is so convincing that upon first gaze it often brings the question of whether it is tied for the fish or the fisherman, and truthfully, I wanted to find that answer just as much as anyone else. I tied up several prototypes along with a black, mud dauber version, later coined the “Jeffrey Dauber,” and stashed them away in my boat bag for an upcoming trip to Idaho with my good friend Danny Lane. When the trip finally rolled around, my wife Lisa, Danny and I set off on a sweltering day for a float down a certain eastern Idaho river with high hopes. It didn’t take long to realize that both the Lucky B and Jeffrey Dauber pulled fussy fish up from the depths and were eaten with 100 percent confidence, much like a beetle or an ant, but perhaps even more so. My vision of finally creating an “extra” terrestrial pattern to throw when things got tough was finally realized and watching fish after fish pull up to the fly and mow it down with zero hesitation was just the confirmation I had been hoping for.
The Lucky B is fun to tie and it’s even more fun to fish, especially when you want to throw something a bit different from the guy in front of you. It’s tied for both the fish and the fisherman alike, you just gotta bee-lieve.
Craven's Lucky B Wasp/Yellowjacket Fly Recipe Craven's Lucky B yellowjacket/wasp fly. HOOK: #16 Tiemco 2487.THREAD: Yellow 8/0 UNI-Thread.ABDOMEN BASE : Yellow macramé yarn.ATTACHMENT: 0X nylon monofilament.ABDOMEN: Strip of yellow Fly Foam, 1mm X 3mm.LEGS: Small, amber Sexi-Floss.SHELLBACK: Strip of yellow Fly Foam, 2mm X 3mm.THORAX: Black Superfine Dubbing.WINGS: Mixed yellow, rust, black, and smoke gray polypropylene macramé yarn.COLLAR: Black Copic Marker.
Step-by-Step Fly Tying Instructions for Craven's Lucky B Yellowjacket/Wasp Fly 1. Clamp a fine sewing needle in the vise. Start the tying thread a quarter inch from the tapered point. Form a spiraling thread base back about 8 to 9mm, leaving a long tag end of thread. 2. Tie a small clump of yellow polypropylene yarn fibers on the top of the needle from one end of the thread base to the other. Clip off the excess yarn on the front end, but leave the back clump. 3. Cut a 1mm strip of foam from a 3mm-thick sheet of yellow foam. Tie it down at the start of the thread base and wrap back over it in spiraling turns to the other end. 4. Cut a three-inch length of 0X nylon monofilament and tie it in with one loose end facing out of the front. Loop the other end forward and wrap over it to firmly anchor the tippet material to the thread base. Add a light coat of Zap-A-Gap all the way around the underbody. 5. Begin wrapping the foam strip forward in overlapping turns. When you reach the front, you should have a body that tapers from thin at the back to much thicker at the front. Pull the foam strip up at an angle toward the tip of the needle and tie it off on the front edge of the foam abdomen. Clip the excess foam strip as close as you can, then whip-fifinish in the crease in the foam. Clip the thread. 6. Pinch the foam body on the needle and give it a quick twist as you pull forward, releasing it from the needle before the glue sets. Hold the foam body in one hand and pull gently on the tag end of thread that is hanging out of the abdomen. You will draw out a couple of inches of thread before it tightens up, cinching the thread base tight from the inside. Clip the thread as well as the remaining poly yarn fifibers flflush at the end of the body. Clip one of the monofifilament strands flflush at the front of the body, leaving the other one in place. 7. Mount a hook in your vise and build a thread base from the eye to about halfway between the hook point and the barb on the hook. Tie the monofifilament strand to the top of the hook with a smooth layer of tight thread wraps, leaving a gap between the abdomen and hook so the monofifilament is exposed. Fold the long end of the monofifilament back along the hook shank and tie it down with another tight layer of thread. Clip the excess monofifilament. 8. Tie in a long strand of Sexi-Floss at the center of its length along the far side of the hook. Wrap back over the flfloss to the end of the thread base, anchoring the leg on the far side of the hook. Pull the front end of the flfloss back along the near side and pin it in place with a few more thread wraps. Add a small drop of Zap-A-Gap to the thread wraps. 9. Cut another foam strip of 2mm by 3mm. Tie in this strip just behind the hook eye over the glue. Wrap back over the foam to the base of the legs. 10. Dub a small ball of black Superfine Dubbing against the base of the foam strip. 11. Pull off a small clump of the mixed-color yarn and fold it into a loop. Pinch and roll the closed end of the loop to sharpen the point end. Tie in the first wing angled to the far side at the base of the dubbing ball with a few tight turns of thread. Do the same on the other side. Clip the excess flush. Tie in short lengths of Sexi-Floss by their centers along each side of the base of the wings. Place a tiny drop of Zap-A-Gap on the base of the wing tie-down. 12. Dub a thin strand of Superfine Dubbing onto your thread and wrap it to cover the thread work, and to position the front legs. The dubbing should end about an eye length from the hook eye. 13. Pull the foam strip over the top of the fly between the wings and down just behind the hook eye. Tie down the foam with a few tight, stacked thread wraps, but leave the thread hanging in the crease. 14. Loop the remaining foam back over itself, forming a small, rounded head, and tie it down again in the same crease. 15. Whip-finish the thread in the crease and clip the thread. Trim the remaining foam strip flush to the top of the shellback. Trim the legs so the back legs are a bit longer than the abdomen, and the front legs form a tight X shape. 16. Use the fine-tip end of a black Copic Marker to decorate the body. Don’t go crazy here, but go ahead and be creative. Those dots on the side of the abdomen are not only accurate to the real thing, but also increase catch rates by up to 37 percent. Charlie Craven co-owns Charlie’s Fly Box in Arvada, Colorado. He is the author of four books, most recently Tying Streamers: Essential Flies and Techniques for the Top Patterns (Stackpole Books, 2020).
