welcome to english 24

I was looking at the label of the Bird Fur from Whiting Farms recently and saw Shrimp as one of the main uses. I was like, hmmm. So I bought Orange, Grizzly Salmon, and Pink with the idea of replacing my bucktail on a typical shrimp pattern with this. I love the results. I hope the fish will as well.

These are tied on a size 6 hook and I found the best amount of feathers to be 3. 2 was too sparse that the flash over powered the hackle and 4 was tooo much. This is solely based off other shrimp patterns I have tied and had friends try and test for me who utilize the effectiveness of Shrimp Flies. I have yet to find Shrimp in my local waters, but have tried to trick a few on still water with some rust orange hoping it might look like a different crayfish to them :)

The Hackle comes in a bunch of colors, Ice dub, Wire, Flash and everything comes in a bunch of colors so mix and match to suit your needs.

Thanks for watching

-Svend

The Recipe:
Hook: #Ahrexhooks NS150 size 6
Thread: #semperfli waxed thread 8/0
Long Antenna: I bypassed this on this pattern but you could easily add them
Antennule: Krystal Flash
Walking Legs/ Maxillipeds: #Jsflyfishing voodoo fibers
Eyes: 20 or 30lb mono with black resin and coated in #semperfli no tack uv
Rostrum/Carapace/Abdomen: #Whitingfarms bird fur
Segmentation: #semperfli Wire .3mm black
Swimmerets: Ice Dub
Flipper: Bird Fur
Glue: Thick resin then Semperfli No Tack UV
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#Flytying #tyingingoneflyaday #svendflies

Here is a short video showing how you can use the sheets of foam from your fly shop or from the craft store to quickly make some foam strips to be used for Popper heads or other really cool foam strip head patterns.

All you need is some scissors and some 2mm foam.

I also show how you can use a rotary cutter to speed up the process (***what I usually use***) when combined with a ruler. It makes it really really fast and accurate.

You can spend as much time as you want for precision cuts and measuring length and width, but I always eyeball it and have played around with widths of the strips and it really comes down to tying preference. Be warned, if you cut them to thin and dont use the appropriate thread, it will cut the foam. Relatively quick process and as I tie patterns I will include the links to those patterns here as examples:


The Tools and Material Required:
2mm foam sheets
Scissors (Dont use your really nice tying scissors)
Rotary Cutting tool (optional)
Ruler (optional)
Cutting Mat (only if using the rotary cutting tool)
Zip Lock back, to store all the cut strips that are not used.