I'm tying up some saltwater shrimp patterns of various sizes and concoctions in white, pink, tan and light green/olive. Most shrimp patterns I see seem to be underdressed or at least sparsely dressed...

Is this the general rule for shrimp flies? Kinda like tying a clouser sparsely, which I agree with? At least I've never noticed any difference using sparsely -vs- densely dressed clousers...

Or is it more a regional thing - i.e. fish in X region like them this way (sparse) -vs- another region (dense), pattern type excluded? (Of course, I acknowledge that shrimp could be tied specifically to mimic a particular areas' local shrimp).

Do you tie your shrimps sparse or dense? or does it depend more on a pattern for a particular region?

In addition, I've tied some Al's Shrimpf from the FOTW archives, but am curious about the other back/hackle materials he uses but does not discuss. He talks about using RFS and badger, but in the pictures he has some shrimpfs that have what looks like stiff straight synthetic hackle or is that just hair (deer?). I tied some using deer hair and they turned out ok, I suppose. The deer hair seems to have a larger diameter than the material in the pictures and might too stiff?

And, of course, this would be a great time for you to post a recipe for your favorite shrimp patterns!

Thanks all!