The fly was dubbed the “River Prawn”. This stems from fishing with soft plastic paddle tails and it was a colour that we all loved and produced the bite.
My favourite hook to use for this pattern is a Mustad Tarpon hook in a #6. This one is tied using the new Mustad C68SAP.
Start off by securing the dumbbell eyes to your hook. Here you can use bead chain eyes or a dumbbell’s eye in 3mm or 4mm tungsten. On this tie I have used a 3mm tungsten eye. If you know you are not fishing in or over structure, then use the tungsten eyes as they are heavier and get you deeper much faster. I start off by using a 200D white to secure the eyes and shape the body. Tie off the white and replace with black in 30-50D thread. Then cover the body with some pearl accent, three strands are more than enough, cross the accent over the eyes as well before securing and cutting of the excess in front of the eyes. Refer Image below.
Now cover the body with some UV glue making sure that it has soaked in really well on the eyes. Now if you are fishing from the beach and the fly will be dragged up the beach on every cast than add a bit more UV to the underside of the fly as this will help to keep the fly working for longer when fishing. If you are fishing from the rocks and not dragging the fly up the beach than a thin layer will be good.
Start the underwing with a small amount of kip tail in white. You only need a very small amount. This is only there to hold up your craft fur as it’s a much softer material and falls flat once in the water. Kip tail should go just past the bend of your hook. Once you have secured this to the top off the shank add one strand of Super UV flash to either side of the fly. Now cut some tan Craft fur and remove all the “underfur” but don’t throw this away as it makes for good material when making some shrimp patterns. Once the Tan underfur has been removed get all the fibres to roughly the same length but still have some sort of taper, secure this to the shank covering the white kip tail and just going past the kip tail. This way it will blend in very nicely with the white below. You can now add one strand of gold flash on either side of the fly and trim off just in front of your tan Craft fur. Lastly put a small amount of brown on top of your tan, you don’t want this to go over to the sides of your tan. It has to sit on top. About a third of the tan will be enough. Secure the cotton and finish of with some UV glue as can be seen on the image below.
This fly is my go-to from the beach or in the harbour. And has accounted for many different species. The wave garrick are particularly fond of it and the kingies can’t resist it.
The tying sequence is shown below:
