I only used 6 ingredients for this guy, and I’m pretty happy with the results. Imitation wood duck feathers make the claws and tail, 30 lb mono for the eyes, copper crystal dubbing for the mouth parts, dubbing, brown hackle for legs, and a heavy wire to segment the body. I used heavier crafting/beading wire to assist the lead weight in getting this guy deep. This one, and the others in the batch, are tied in size 8.
I came up with this when I found that every pattern for a crawfish imitation I could find had at least one or two materials that I don’t have and have never used on any other fly before so I sat down with a pile of materials, a stiff whiskey, and a determined mind to come up with something. My buddy has been severely outfishing me in warm water with his crawfish, so I had to come up with something to even the odds.
Lay a base of orange thread down and add lead to the majority of the shank. Lock the lead into place and take your thread down just into the turn of the hook.
Take a clump of the copper crystal dubbing and clump it in a way that gets the majority of the tips pointing in one direction and tie them in as you would a tail, but allow them to point slightly down (this will be up as the fly should ride with the hook up).
Tie in a small amount of orange dubbing, just enough to create space between the “mouth parts” and where the eyes enter the “head.”
Cut a piece of heavy mono to about an inch and carefully use a lighter or candle to melt the ends to create the eyes. Bend this in the middle to create a kink in the line. Secure the eyes just behind the dubbing by wrapping across the kink in the mono, then position them to aim slightly below (or above, because it’s upside down) the mouth parts.
Cover the tied down bit of mono with dubbing, and don’t be afraid to dub in front of the eyes to help keep them separated.
Take two imitation wood duck feathers and strip them to leave only the barbules of the tips remaining to the desired size of the claws. Tie these in one at a time (I recommend using a pinch wrap to help keep them where you want them when you secure them in. As you’re tying these in, keep the concave more up than down, and canted slightly inwards.
Dub a thorax.
Tie in a brown hackle feather. Wrap the feather 3 turns back over the dubbing you just added, and then back 3 turns and secure at the tie in point.
Tie in heavy gold or copper wire.
Dub the rest of the hook shank leaving an eyes length from the hook eye bare.
Wrap the wire towards the eye to create a segmented body and secure the wire where the dubbing ends.
Strip another imitation wood duck feather in the same manner as you did for the claws, and tie it in near the eye with the concave side facing up to create a tail.
Dub over where you tied in the tail and whip finish in front of the tail. This easier done if you left enough room behind the eye.
Trim the tail straight across to the desired length, and add head cement as desired.
If there is enough interest I may make a YouTube video that might better explain this process.
Nice looking fly there. I’d be curious to know how it fishes for you, for I fish for Bass and have tried many crawfish patterns w/o a whole lot of consistent success. Problem is similar to you with materials not being available. Almost all the Bass I catch (those I keep to eat) have eaten Crawfish of rather large sizes, so finding a pattern that I can tie large and works consistently has been a task. By large, I’m talking 3" lg in size. I have archived many Craw patterns, but have yet to get it right.
