I always hesitate before offering up ideas about surf flies. More than any other sort of fishing I do, more so even than steelheading, fly fishing in the surf inspires few anxieties about what to tie to the end of my leader. I’m not as bad as my buddy Ed Simpson, who’s fished nothing but his white rabbit-fur grub for the past several decades, on the theory that fish in the surf can’t possibly be too choosy, and there’s no reason for them to reject anything that looks alive, good enough to eat.
The theory rests, of course, on the assumption that fish near shore or in the surf — or most anywhere, for that matter — are looking for food. Eating and spawning — that about covers any fish’s life, besides doing its damnedest, as well, not to get eaten by something bigger or tougher than it is. Naturally, fish are on the lookout for the food they normally see, but they will take what they can get, just as when I go into a restaurant, hungry, looking for a good burger, and if that’s not available, I’ll readily take the pizza, the fish and chips, or even, God forbid, the fettuccine Alfredo.
That’s the theory. I tend to agree. Corbina anglers will argue that you need a good sand crab or mole crab pattern, because that’s what these spooky fish are looking for when they slide in over the sand with the inshore wash, a point I concede, even though I’ve caught my fair share of corbinas on baitfish patterns and Clousers. Most of my success in the surf, however, has little to do with fly patterns. Instead, I put my faith in reading the water, strong casts, and willingness to put in the sort of time it takes to find fish moving with the tides.
Still, I understand as much as anyone that a profound and often overlooked appeal of the sport is getting fish to eat patterns we’ve created to look like bait, of whatever form, that the fish we’re after typically feed on. This is the reason why many of us moved on from marshmallows, Velveeta cheese, or Super Dupers, despite their efficacy in any number of angling circumstances. It really isn’t just about catching fish. Nor, for that matter, is the point of the sport merely to hook and land fish with a fly rod, a fly reel, and a fly attached to a leader on the end of a fly line. Of course, that’s what we all try to do. Yet as Ken Kesey said in Sometimes a Great Notion about reality, fly fishing is “greater than the sum of its parts, also a damn sight holier.”
Now where were we?
My own go-to lineup of surf f lies consists of little more than a couple of baitfish patterns, some Clouser-like minnows with dumbbell eyes, a bunch of surface
Crease Flies in various colors, and something I think mimics any of a variety of small crustaceans you might see gathered near shore. Mimicking those crustaceans is what the Surf Shrimp is all about.
Before a recent visit to San Diego, I tied up a half dozen Holey Moleys, Al Quattrocchi’s sand or mole crab pattern (California Fly Fisher, November/December 2018), but then I found myself fishing in an estuary without the sort of rolling wash that sand crabs inhabit. I’ve written here about the late Peter Koga’s Magic Charlie bonefish pattern, a good little bay shrimp fly I’ve used with success in Baja’s Magdalena Bay. But after seeing the size to which shrimp grow by the end of the summer and into the fall, I’ve been looking for a more substantial pattern to toss into the troughs and slots found near the edges of surf.
The Surf Shrimp is a very minor variation on the Ultimate Shrimp, a fly tied by Jon Makim in Australia. I stumbled on the pattern while investigating the possibility of a visit to Western Australia, a wild coastline reminiscent of the Pacific reaches of the Baja Peninsula before it was tamed by pavement and the heavy influx of gringos from the North. The drive from Perth to Carnarvon is almost exactly the same as from San Diego to Mag Bay — the same latitudes, only south of the equator. Same fish? Same baits? If my theories hold, what works Down Under should transfer nicely, thank you, into the range of waters we find along our own California beaches.
Like many saltwater patterns, however, especially those that attempt to imitate crustaceans, the Surf Shrimp feels more like something you assemble, rather than actually tie. Dumbbells, prefab eyes, rubber legs, epoxy –— it all reminds me of building model airplanes or model cars, something I was never good at as a kid because I wanted to be outside playing games that involved some sort of ball and a way to best an opponent. Admittedly, this sort of competitiveness still informs some of my efforts at the tying bench: I like nothing better than tying flies that I know beyond doubt will fool fish, if I can just find and hit the target. The big challenge in surf fishing is locating likely water that holds fish in the first place. Your fly, if you’ve chosen correctly, should vanish from your thoughts so that you can bear down on what you need to do to catch fish.
Still, the question remains: How much do patterns really matter in the surf? I’ve advocated in the past for impressionistic shrimp patterns for steelheading (Ally’s Shrimp, Badger Shrimp). Is the Surf Shrimp, instead, just another example of a fly created to catch the attention of anglers, a pattern that looks good in their eyes, but ends up failing to possess the appropriate juju that actually makes fish eat? No doubt there are plenty of those flies crowding out better, simpler, more provocative patterns in fly boxes carried to surf ’s edge. But like traditional, old-school soft hackles for trout, it’s hard to sell most anglers on a fly like, say, Ed Simpson’s grub, tied out of a single strip of rabbit fur.
I was with Ed, armed with my new Holy Moleys, when we failed to f ind sand-crab and corbina water and ended up on the sand spit of a pretty estuary. Ed had tied on his white grub, even though he was hoping to catch a bonefish, which are showing up more and more these days this far north, what with changing ocean conditions. I knotted on my version of Koga’s Crazy Charlie, caught nothing, and quickly switched to one of my standard unweighted baitfish patterns. Had I already stumbled upon and tied a few Surf Shrimps, this would have been the moment to experiment. Who knows if it would have done the trick. Instead of those bonefish Ed was hoping for, we both caught a share of small halibut, proving, once again, little else but that you catch fish with the fly you keep in the water.
Materials
Hook: Gamakatsu SL12S, size 2, or similar
Thread: Veevus monofilament, Danville fine monofilament, or similar
Weight: 5/32-inch black Dazl-Eyes, or similar
Mouthparts/Body/Tail: White Unique Hair, Fish Hair, or similar
Eyes: Melted 100-pound-test monofilament tips, EP Crab and Shrimp Eyes, or similar
Feelers: UV orange Krystal Flash, or similar
Legs: Clear/pearl–silver flake Sili Legs, or similar
Head: Orange or tan dubbing
Shell: Five-minute epoxy, UV cure f ly finish, or similar.
Tying Instructions
Step 1: Mount the hook and start the thread just back from the eye of the hook. If you haven’t tied with fine monofilament before, this is your chance to get some and try it out. You’ll like the seethrough effects with epoxy, plus, it’s a lot tougher when you accidentally catch it on the point of the hook, while winding aft. Lay down a thread base over the entire hook shank and down into the bend. Now fiddle with a tuft of Unique Hair so the aft ends are tapered and then secure the tuft to the top of the hook bend. Secure the entire tuft along the top of the hook shank. Clip the forward ends, leaving about three-eighths of an inch in front of the eye. Later, you’ll clip these forward ends — the “tail” of the fly — even shorter.
Step 2: Now the eyes. Whether you use the prefabricated Enrico Puglisi variety or make your own eyes by melting the tips of heavy monofilament (for jumbo shrimp, I’ve also used heavy line made for a garden trimmer), it’s a good idea to flatten the stalk or stem of the eye with a pair of flat-jawed pliers. The flattened stalks are easier to hold in place along the sides of the hook shank while you cover them with thread wraps. After securing the eyes, trim the base of the stalks so that you have room for the dumbbell weight you’ll eventually tie in just behind the hook eye.
Step 3: For feelers, fold a single strand of Krystal Flash over the thread, secure it on top of the hook shank, and position the two halves so that they lie above the eyes and along the sides of the tapered Unique Hair. Frankly, I suspect these feelers are just the kind of thing that are included to catch the attention of anglers and are superfluous to the overall efficacy of the fly, but what do I know?
Step 4: For the legs or skirt of the fly, use the full length of three Sili Legs. At the start of the bend of the hook, secure the legs at their midpoint along one side of the fly. Then fold the other half of the three legs over to the far side of the hook and secure them with more thread wraps, so that you end up with six legs hanging aft of the hook bend, three on each side. At this point, leave the legs, like the feelers, running long. You can come back to them later and trim them as you see fit for the size of shrimp you think the fish you’re after feed on.
Step 5: For the head of the fly, form a small dubbing noodle and cover the tie-in bulge left from the legs and feelers. The color of the dubbing — anything from orange to tan — can vary according to shrimp you encounter in your own waters. After forming the head, clean any excess dubbing material from the thread and make a few more wraps over the dubbing head, tidying it up so that it will be easier to cover evenly later with epoxy. Again, this is an attribute of clear monofilament thread.
Step 6: Secure the dumbbell weights (in this fly they aren’t actually eyes) on top of the hook just behind the hook eye. As always, do whatever you can to keep the dumbbells from spinning or twisting once you’re fishing. Fortunately, in this case, you’ll have plenty of epoxy to help out. At this point, you can also do any filling in with thread wraps between the butts of the eye stalks and the dumbbells. Of course, all of this will be covered with epoxy, as well.
Step 7: After whip f inishing and cutting off the thread, create an epoxy body that covers the head, the entire hook shank, and the wrist of the dumbbells. I also trim the Unique Hair so that it extends only about three-sixteenths of an inch past the hook eye, and I cut the feelers to about whatever length I have cut or left the legs. Although I can’t speak highly enough about UV cured resin, I used traditional two-part five-minute epoxy for the example shown here, which accounts for the less than perfectly transparent body. Who knows but that opacity might actually be “truer to life”? For an image of the fly after this step, see page 15.
