Fly Tier's Bench: Craven's 'Lil Bit

A simple and natural nymph with a little “extra.”

January 01, 2025 By Charlie Craven

After a lifetime of tying flies and designing original patterns, I have realized that sometimes the hardest part of perfecting a new fly is knowing when to stop tinkering and call it good. One of my favorite mentors, John Barr, epitomizes this trait and there is nary a material in any of his flies that doesn’t have a good reason to be there. The same goes for my friends Pat Dorsey and Lance Egan. Their flies are minimalistic in materials, simple to tie, and mimic naturals without any unnecessary window dressing—as opposed to my personal style of fly design that entails always trying to add just that one more little bit that will set the pattern apart from the crowd and improve its effectiveness on the water. That little “extra” helps satisfy my artistic side as well as my practicality. While I absolutely cannot say that I have mastered the simple, direct, and minimalistic approach of Barr, Dorsey, and Egan, I can say that I am making strides in that secret aspiration with patterns like the Mole Fly and Poison Tung.

My latest offering, dubbed the ᾽Lil Bit, is one I am particularly proud of. Oddly enough, it’s not because it features complicated tying tricks or unusual materials, but because I have finally come up with something simple and easy to tie that catches fish like crazy and solves a fishing problem to boot. It feels a bit weird to brag about developing this fly when the finished product is clearly so simple . . . so I will just keep my mouth shut and let you tie some for yourself and report back.

My Two Bit Hooker has been one of the most popular and effective flies in the country for some years now and is paralleled closely by my Jujubaetis pattern. While the larger Two Bit Hooker features two tungsten beads, a simple abdomen and thorax, and basic hen hackle fiber tails and legs, the diminutive Jujubaetis is built with a complicated, multicolor abdomen and involved thorax and wingcase/leg combo that creates a super-realistic silhouette that is a dead ringer for trout food on any river, anytime, anywhere. Recognizing the superlative traits of both these flies, I really wanted to figure out a way to mesh the two ideas, retaining the silhouette of the Jujubaetis but with the weight and versatility of the Two Bit Hooker.

A small, hyper-realistic, heavy nymph pattern was what I was after, and I went down a disturbing number of rabbit holes trying to find the right ingredients to make it happen. As it finally came to be, I must admit that I was a bit surprised at its simplicity and had to restrain myself from trying to add anything more to it, a feat at which I am historically not very good. I finally overcame my affliction and left good enough alone. The finished pattern is all that I was hoping for with the added bonus that it is cheap, quick, and easy to tie but still presents a perfect silhouette and the added weight I was after.

I started with a Tiemco 2488 hook, opting for the finer wire hook as this fly would be tied in smaller sizes from 16 to 22 and wouldn’t require the extra-heavy wire of the 2488H. I coupled this hook with two 1.5mm tungsten beads for weight, using the smallest bead sizes so as not to disrupt the overall profile of the pattern and avoid any clumsiness in the shape. I reverted to my requisite hen hackle fiber tails as they have proved to be beautiful, accurate, and durable. Rather than building a complicated combination of abdomen and thorax, I stumbled upon a new material called Veevus Body Quill—a braided, shiny but not flashy strand that comes in many colors and can be easily used as both the body material and tying thread on small patterns. After working my way through a variety of different thorax and wingcase combinations, I discovered that I could simply jump the Body Quill between the beads, tie down a couple bunches of hen hackle fibers for the legs, and fill in the thorax area all with the same material. I then put a light coat of UV resin over the entire back of the fly.

To mimic the dark wingcase of the natural, I use a marker to simply draw it onto the resin, and I top it with a slightly bulbous coat of resin to finish off the shape. The resulting pattern is slim, heavy, perfectly shaped, and insanely durable. It takes minutes to tie and can be made in a host of colors and is tied nearly entirely from one inexpensive material. I’m never gonna reach the heights of John, Pat, or Lance when it comes to simple patterns, but I am feeling pretty good about this ᾽Lil Bit of goodness I’ve come up with.

I like to fish the ’Lil Bit on a standard nymph rig, particularly during Baetis or PMD emergences. My preferred method of nymph fishing involves sighted fish in shallow, fast-moving riffles, and the added weight of the two tungsten beads keeps the ’Lil Bit and whatever pattern I have tied on behind it anchored deep in the water column.

I love watching for the “white mouth” take of the fish as I drift my rig by them, and this method has become a rival to good dry-fly fishing when it’s really going well. I’ve also fished the ’Lil Bit during a hatch under a smaller dry, a combo that doesn’t typically work too well with either of its parents as they are either too heavy in the case of the Two Bit Hooker or too light in the case of the Jujubaetis. Like Goldilocks’ porridge, the ᾽Lil Bit is juuust right under a smaller dry and fishes perfectly in the upper water column for fish that are too shy to take the dry.

'Lil Bit Fly-Tying Recipe

HOOK: #16-22 Tiemco 2488.
BEADS: Two 1.5mm olive tungsten.
THREAD/ABDOMEN/THORAX: Dark olive Veevus Body Quill.
TAIL/LEGS: Brown coq de León hen saddle.
WINGCASE: Black marker.
COATING: Solarez Bone-Dry Plus.

'Lil Bit Step-by-Step Tutorial

A step in a fly-tying tutorial; a hook with fly-tying materials in a vise. — Step 1.

1. Begin by placing two of the tungsten beads onto the shank in the conventional manner, with the small hole facing toward the hook eye. Set up your bobbin with the spool of Body Quill and thread it through the tube. Using the Body Quill as though it were thread, start it on the hook behind the beads with a jam knot, and trim the tag end.

2. Wrap a smooth base of Body Quill to the bend of the hook and tie in a small clump of coq de León hen saddle fibers that are about a half shank length long for the tail. Wrap forward over the butt ends to just short of the beads, and trim the excess.

3. Use the Body Quill to build a slight taper from the base of the tail up to and just slightly smaller than the hole in the back of the bead.

4. Jump the Body Quill forward over the top of the rear bead and make a few turns in between the two beads to separate them. Make several more wraps to build up the shank diameter between the beads. This larger arbor will help set the incoming legs at a shallow angle to the shank, preventing them from sticking out too far to the sides.

5. Peel a larger clump of fibers from the same feather you used for the tail. Make sure the tips of the clump are even, and separate the bunch with your scissor tips to divide it equally in two. Place this clump of fibers from the front of the hook with one half on either side and tilt them slightly toward you to anticipate the thread torque when you tie them down. I usually tie these in a bit long, as they are easy to shorten in the next steps.

6. Make a few wraps over the butt ends of the legs between the beads and allow the torque to square them up on the shank so they are on each side of the shank.

7. Now carefully pull on the butt ends of the fibers on each side of the shank to bring the legs to proper length. I like them to reach back to a point even with about halfway between the hook point and the point on the barb.

8. The legs should be square on the sides of the hook and equal in length.

9. To eliminate any stubs in the tie-off area, pull the long end of the butt ends back along the side of the shank and lock them in place with a single turn of Body Quill on each side.

10. Once the butt ends are pinned, whip-finish the Body Quill with about two or three turns. Clip the excess Body Quill flush, then use the tips of your scissors and trim the butt ends of the legs as close as you can.

11. Apply a thin coat of Solarez Bone-Dry Plus over the dorsal surface of the fly, starting at the back edge of the front bead and working back to the base of the tail to produce a light coating that tapers a bit from front to back. Cure this first coat with your UV lamp.

12. Using a black permanent parker, color in the top of the resin from the back edge of the front bead to just past the back edge of the rear bead to form the wingcase.