Overuse is bad for baseball bullpens, groundwater aquifers, credit cards, and antibiotics. Overusing anything can be bad, unless it involves fly fishing with shrimp patterns on the shallow flats of Sarasota Bay. Just as anglers will always catch fish using live shrimp all year, you can always catch fish using a shrimp pattern fly throughout the year. But, shrimp flies in the Bay are more effective at certain times of the year. Now is a great time to be using them.
Many shallow grass flats are currently loaded with live shrimp and there still isn’t an abundance of white bait around. As a result, fish like seatrout and redfish are really keyed in on shrimp. There are more than enough shrimp patterns to choose from, but even those can be broken into two distinct categories: Shrimp moving forward patterns or Shrimp moving backwards patterns (fleeing shrimp).
Shrimp moving forward patterns would be flies that resemble the D.O.A. Shrimp lure and are designed to be worked slowly forward, like a natural shrimp, slowly crawling or swimming forward over grass. For a lot of obvious reasons, these shrimp fly patterns aren’t nearly as effective as forward moving soft plastic shrimp lures are. Fleeing shrimp patterns though, seem to be as effective as any lure or jig that can be thrown on spinning tackle resembling a shrimp in escape mode.
The fleeing shrimp pattern above (exothermic shrimp) has a lot going for it. The hidden clouser eyes give it a nice fall and pop during the retrieve and the extra long crazy legs give the fly an action that, based on its success, must mimic a fleeing shrimp very closely. The body wrapped with green krystal flash and coated with epoxy is another area of the fly that sends out the ‘shrimp vibe’.
The secondary benefit of leaving the rubber crazy legs extra long is that your final product will be a fly with a body small enough to use for subtle sight fishing presentations, yet the extra long crazy legs give the fly a large profile when swimming it through the water if you’re prospecting with blind casts.
Above is another variation of the exothermic shrimp. Aside from the obvious color change, the fly itself is a little more robost. The tail section (racoon) is thicker and a bit longer than the first fly. These were tied on a size 1 hook and represent a larger sized shrimp. This color pattern is working well when fished over potholes on grass flats.
(Above) Instead of wrapping krystal flash on the hook shank to create extra ‘shrimp vibes’, a 0.5″ dark purple EP brush was substituted which creates good contrast and will be more durable than krystal flash coated in epoxy. This process results in a much faster fly tying process and a more durable fly.
The same EP brush in chartreuse was used on the more traditional colored shrimp patterns below. Although the brush is not as aesthetically pleasing as the crisp and sleek finish of a hook shank wrapped in krystal flash, saving yourself from the laborious process of wrapping and coating hook shanks with flash and epoxy is worth considering.
In fifty years, fish on the flats will still be eating shrimp; that’s not going to change. Next time you’re on the flats pondering a fly change, consider using something that never gets old. Just make sure that whatever shrimp pattern you’re throwing is a shrimp fleeing backwards that vaguely resembles the size and colors of the shrimp in your area. Extra long crazy legs couldn’t hurt either.
Tight Loops,
Brian Boehm
Quiet Waters Guide Service
Sarasota, Florida
941-400-6218
Tags: redfish fly shrimp fly exothermic shrimp
