"Samurai" Fly Shop

I’m old enough to remember a Steve Martin schtick in his stand-up comedy album (yes, album) that was about “getting small”. On stage he made like he was taking a drug that would make him small. Youtube has a recording at “Let’s Get Small”. Start the video at 7:54 for the “Get Small” part. It was especially funny to watch him on stage but unfortunately I couldn’t find any video, the audio is all I could find.

Well I don’t have a drug like that and tying “small” is difficult for me. In my efforts to come up with a tiny crawfish I started with a size 6 and got down to a size 12. I’m going to “get small” some more and go down to about 14 but I think that’s my limit. I watched a friend tie a size 22 Adams that was just about perfect. Not me.

I will say that using UV resin with clear plastic has helped me “get small” down to the size 12 and possibly to 14. Other tyers with better eyes I am sure could do much better. Right Scott?

After I started this push for a tiny crawfish I couldn’t help but wonder why there aren’t more tiny patterns for them. Crawfish are in just about every waterway in North America, cold or warm. Crayfish spawn in the winter so the tiny young of the year should be plentiful in early Spring. We tie sowbugs and stone flies in tiny sizes but I don’t see much emphasis on crayfish until you include smallmouth bass and of course even the smaller patterns are larger than what I’m tying now.

So why no small crayfish patterns? Well, I think it’s just because the tiny crustaceans are hard to tie. Sowbugs? A cinch to tie small. Crayfish with their antennae, eyeballs, claws, legs, tail, shellback and whatever those little appendages under the tail are, get complicated quick.

The claws I am doing by taking ultra chenille and doubling it over and then taking a bobbin and overwrapping and half-hitching. I use lighter to ever so lightly wave over the ends to scorch the ends to points to make the pointy parts of the claws. I have tied knots to accomplish the same thing but in my mind the resulting claws looked like the hands of the Who’s in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”. I didn’t want Who-hands on my crayfish. These look better.

Rubber legs just seemed to be too large and didn’t look right so I went with the long moose hairs and used the blunt ends. I borrow a trick from the Featherbender, Barry Ord Clarke, by pushing on the ends and making them bend and kind of break to resemble joints.

Anyway, that’s what I’m doing while I wait for the water to warm up for field testing. Field reports still to come!