@Kevin Prather reminded me that a beginner’s warm water assortment should include a crawdad. I put this together from ideas from lots of patterns.
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Great looking fly! That will do the trick!
I like it, will try it.
Rick
Thanks, guys. It came better than I expected for improvising a pattern.
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It’s worth noting that bass have shown a marked preference for clawless crayfish, or crayfish with one claw.
I know that In-Fisherman did a study on this, and I’m pretty sure there have been others.
It’s one of the ideas behind the Ned Rig in conventional fishing.
I don’t see a description on how to tie the fly.
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I think the single claw effect is one reason for the success of tan or olive wooly buggers in warm water. A crawdad is one of the many things they could imitate.
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Hi John. I’ll try to remember what I did. The shellback which was tied in first is turkey tail projecting out over the bend of the hook. A length of fine copper wire from an extension cord was tied parallel to that and then tied back to the hook shank the length of the nose which was dubbed over it. the first section of the shellback was pulled over that and the wire used to create a segmentation. The turkey was folded forward and the wire wrapped to the shank for the thorax area. The claws are fox squirrel tail tied on both sides of the hook for the length of the thorax for bulk and extended forward past the nose. Then the thorax was dubbed over that with a pheasant body feather palmered over it and trimmed on the bottom, the shellback pulled over it and locked down with a wrap of wire. The turkey tail is again bent forward out of the way but the wire is left hanging while the slender tail is dubbed. Then the shellback is pulled over and the tail is segmented with the wire. Tie off wire and turkey tail at eye and cut off wire at tie off and turkey a little past the eye.
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I tend to agree. There’s other flies that work well for this too.
Thanks, I appreciated the info