Do Crawdad/Crayfish patterns Work? Which?

[willapabay]

I was reading a couple fly tying books and both authors seem to feel that although crawdad patterns are fun to tie, and look interesting they don't generally do well as a fish catching fly.

I noticed that cutthroat feed on them , but those are live bait not artificial.

Has anyone had good experiences with them here in WA. rivers and can you point me to some patterns that work, if they exist..
Also mention any prefered color.. thank you, Ron on the Willapa

[cabezon]

Hi Ron,

While I haven't used crayfish patterns much in Washington, I did play with them quite a bit when I was fishing for largemouths and stripers in eastern North Carolina and for smallmouths in Maine. In general, I felt that I did just about as well with a wooly bugger as with a more imitative crayfish pattern. You don't often see crayfish just out in the open during the day (but they are very obvious at night if you shine a flashlight into most western WA rivers and streams). The action of a wooly bugger on a strip, especially that maribou tail, must be a pretty good match to the action of a fleeing crayfish which has been disturbed from its lair during the day. Most crayfish patterns are a pain to tie (especially compared to a wooly bugger) - claws, shellback, antennae, etc. Plus, the colors of crayfish tend to blend in with the rock found in the stream that they inhabit. If you try to match that diversity, you have to tie lots of color options and I don't get the impression that trout are that picky when a wooly bugger is flashing past them. I usually just opt for black, tan, brown, and olive wooly buggers, weighted and unweighted in several sizes. If there is one possible advantage to a more complex crayfish pattern, it would be one in which the hook point rides up. This would reduce the number of flies that get hung on rocks and woody debris. Normally, I like the challenge of lifelike flies, but I think that it is overkill in this application.

Steve

[Jerry Daschofsky]

Yup, I have used crawfish patterns with GREAT success for summerrun steelhead. Haven't really tried them for winterruns of fall salmon. I tie them up in a mixture of orange/browns to mimic the colors of a real crawfish in the rivers.

Like Steve mentioned about hanging up, I tie my flies riding hook up. Since most I want to rest on the bottom, the scurry up, then float back down to the bottom. To achieve this, I won't be fishing alot of fast moving waters. Normally slower water with obstruction where the fish will lie.

I mostly tie them up shrimpstyle. A few mixture creations of my own. I like some movement in the fly.

[willapabay]

Thanks for the advice ,
can you share with me the type of hook you use and size.

thank you

[cabezon]

I would choose longer shank hooks - streamer hooks, in probably size 8, 6, and 4. You could go bigger. Certainly, I'm sure that you have seen crayfish that are several inches long, plus claws. Part of the size issues may depend on your target - steelhead vs. river-run or lake-dwelling trout. Like Jerry, my crayfish patterns are variations on shrimp patterns. One material that can make tying them a bit easier is variegated chenile - two colors, like brown and black or burnt orange and brown. Of course, you can simply tie in two colors of chenile and braid them as you tie them in. To achieve the hook-up orientation, I would use lead eyes tied in near the bend of the hook; basically, you would tie the fly backwards. After all, crayfish tail-flip backwards. Also, when you let the fly drop, the back of the hook would settle first, just as a natural crayfish would drop. As an alternative to the hoop-up orientation, you just tie in a weed guard, but I can never get them to be positioned correctly.

Steve

[FT]

Steve,

When I lived in Montana, I fished several lakes that were just loaded with crayfish that the trout got very large feeding on. After being very unsuccessful with the more realistic crayfish patterns (those with claws, eyes, shellbacks, etc.) I decided to just watch to see if I could find out something about crayfish behavior that the realistic imitations were not providing. I had a real eye-opener doing so because I found that the crayfish used there tails to scull backwards and up in the water when disturbed, which was followed by simply drifting back down to the bottom.

The sculling was also very rapid, which gave the crayfish the appearance of "thinning out" because the legs and antennae were held against the body and the pincers were held together during this rapid movement up. The drifting back to the bottom gave the appearance of "puffing out" or "increasing diameter" because the legs splayed out, the antennae moved up and forward, and the pincers were separated.

I also found that the fish invariably took the crayfish as the drifted back to the bottom, and they did so with a rush before the crayfish could use the sculling motion of its tail/abdomen to make that rapid move up in the water again.

No wonder the more realistic imitation weren't working. The didn't have the proper "jigging" action of the naturals. And they didn't "puff out" as they drifted back to the bottom.

After discovering these things, I decided to best way to imitate them was through using marabou in a brownish grey or greyish/brownish/olive or brownish/rusty orange (not florescent orange, more a dirty rustly orange marabou feather mixed with dark brown marabou feather) tied as tips of the marabout feathers staggered down the shank on a 2xl nymph hook with either led eyes, brass bead, or cone at the head for weight and to provide the needed "jigging" action. I did this because the marabou slims down on the pull and puffs out on the sink, just like the naturals appeared to do.

Such a fly cast on a floating line with a longish leader (10'-12') and giving the fly a chance to sink to near the bottom before giving it a very fast and rather long pull of the left hand (12"-18" pull is not too much), followed by letting it sink again (or free fall as the naturals do) resulted in a lot of fish hooked and landed in the early morning and late evening when the crayfish were active. All the takes occured as the fly was sinking after one of those long, fast pulls of the left hand.

[cabezon]

Hi FT,

Your Montana observations are similar to mine. I like your idea of using marabou to change the dimensions of the fly as it is stripped vs. dropping. I expect that the soft hackle on a wooly bugger has somewhat the same effect, but marabou would be even more effective. I'll have to try that. From your description of how your apply the marabou, you could bias the tips toward what will be the underside of the fly as that is where the legs are on a live crayfish. Also, if one is fishing under low light conditions, eyeballs, antennae, claws, etc. are less necessary than the right "gestalt", especially with a sharp pull on the fly and then letting it settle. More ideas for the vice (ooops - vise)....

Steve

[ceviche]

the right "gestalt

Yes, "gestalt"... It's kind of like the "Unheimlich Maneuver" in fly tying, that is, choosing "uncanny" materials that won't provoke the hurl mechanism in a trout.;)

[FT]

Steve,

When I decided to use marabou to imitate crayfish after observing the behavior of naturals way back in 1980, I also made a conscious decision not to worry about having them imitate the legs because quite honestly, the "puffing" effect of the marabou with the cone head, bead, or led eye at the front of the hook was an excellent representation of how the naturals looked as they drifted back to the bottom. I caught many fish from a particular lake in Western MT that was stocked with Kamloops rainbows of between 8#'s and 12#'s on this simple marabou fly for imitation crayfish.

And yes, the marabou by itself works better than a Woolley Bugger because it is far more mobile than the hackle on a Woollwy Bugger. In fact, I never even bothered with a body on these marabou crayfish imitators, so most folks who saw them assumed I was imitating leeches, when I was using them to imitate crayfish behavior.