This past season, Makani Christensen over at Fly Fishing Hawaii / Keawe Adventures has been developing his “Superfly” pattern. It has proven effective on the Winter and Spring bonefish, which can be frustratingly selective in what they will and won’t eat on any given day.

Personally, my go-to fly when the bonefish are being picky is any type of small, brown crab pattern. I had a number of very effective flies tied up at one point but I recently discovered, to my horror, that I was down to the last one, and I didn’t have the material to tie more!

While I was mulling over this unfortunate circumstance, I noticed that the front half of some of the bushier Superflies looked a lot like little brown crabs. This moment of inspiration led me to develop a Superfly variation, which I have named the “Supercrab.”

Here are the instructions for creating your own Supercrab fly:

1. Obtain one or more bushy, brown Superflies from Makani.
2. Use scissors to create a Supercrab fly.
3. Go catch bonefish!

In all seriousness, the Superfly and Supercrab are good reminders that simple fly patterns are often the best. Whenever I set out to tie a new pattern I always remember what the late, great, American fly-tier, Jack Gartside told me when I asked him about crayfish patterns:

In your tying, you might want to avoid the complicated and aim for just a simple shape, with a concentration on imitating the action of a crayfish rather than on its details.