At the Vise: Gledswood Shrimp

The good news is, we still need steelhead flies. This time last year, I wasn’t so sure. Runs crashed. Rivers up and down the West Coast were shut down to fishing, because even touching these remarkable sea-run fish, especially the wild ones, seemed nothing short of imperiling the existence of the species. Something had happened, apparently, while these fish were out at sea. The Chinook and coho salmon returned last year in adequate numbers, however much reduced from historical numbers, but where were the steelhead? It made me and a lot of other anglers wonder if we ever needed to tie another steelhead fly again.

We’re better off this year. There are fishable numbers of steelhead in the rivers once again. Better off — but a long, long way from where we should be, or could be, or would be if only    Well, you know the story, I hope, as well as I do.

The Gledswood Shrimp originated along Scotland’s River Tweed, one of those famous United Kingdom rivers that still have healthy salmon runs, despite the many changes in our world today. Atlantic salmon, it’s worth noting, are the closest fish anywhere to Pacific Coast steelhead; the flies and techniques used for Atlantic salmon have played a central role in the development of West Coast steelhead fly fishing, from the arrival a hundred years ago of Roderick Haig-Brown in British Columbia, to the dry-line advocacy fifty years ago of Bill McMillan, and for the past quarter century, the use of two-handed rods and, of course, what we now call “Spey” flies. Fly fishing for Pacific Coast steelhead grew out of the traditions and techniques developed by Atlantic salmon anglers, and although the places and prey are not the same, only a foolish steelhead angler, it seems to me, would ignore what Atlantic salmon anglers have done and are doing today. I’d suggest we might pay attention, as well, to, say, the absence of dams and hatcheries on famous Scottish salmon rivers that still offer plenty of sport, despite centuries of serious fishing pressure.

A few things are particularly noteworthy to me about the Gledswood Shrimp — and not only because I happened to fish with a guide on the Tweed, Finlay Wilson, who now uses the pattern almost exclusively, whether with clients or fishing on his own. Committing to a single or at least narrow choice of patterns is no doubt one of the earmarks of successful steelheaders. With a fly on your tippet that you believe in, you can cease worrying about pattern selection and keep your mind on the business of presentation — your cast, its location, the speed and depth of the swing — and your fly in the water. If there’s one thing experienced steelheaders agree on, it’s that success demands more on persistence than it does on fabricating or selecting from a complex arsenal of patterns.

Note, first of all, the name: in modern Atlantic salmon patterns, “shrimp” now has more to do with a style of f ly than it does any attempt to imitate the crustaceous namesake. The style gained popularity some forty years ago with Alastair Gowan’s Ally’s Shrimp: short hook, usually a double, with a sparse tail at least twice as long as the body, but now usually tied out of bucktail, rather than the reddish golden pheasant breast feathers of earlier old-school UK shrimp patterns. Steelheaders enamored of the use of small trailing or “stinger” hooks behind their f lies have been known to question the efficacy of these long-tailed patterns, claiming they can lead to what they call “short strikes.” My experience, however, has always led me to believe that predator fish kill from the head, not the tail, of their prey. I might point out, as well, that the Ally’s Shrimp, long tail and all, remains today “arguably the most successful Scottish salmon fly for all rivers and all seasons,” as one writer noted.


Next, what about the double hook? I’ve written before here about discovering just why it is that doubles have long been popular when fishing flies on the swing for anadromous fish, at least in the UK or anywhere else the Brits, especially, travel for sea-run fish. With two keels tracking in the current, nothing swims like a double. At the same time, I’ve been hesitant to champion the use of doubles, because I was never quite sure if they were legal here in the United States — or at least in California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, states where readers of this column might find themselves swinging flies for steelhead.

I don’t think I have anything to worry about. I hope I never have to go to court over the issue, but on close inspection of each state’s regulations, I’ve concluded that in most rivers where I fish for steelhead, anglers are also allowed to fish with lures, and unless otherwise stated, lures are allowed multiple or at least multipointed hooks. In California, the rule almost always reads, “Only artificial lures with barbless hooks may be used.” Occasionally, you will see the phrase “single barbless hook,” which clearly means no doubles, a rule I can live with, even if I might still feel it reflects an ignorance or misunderstanding on the part of managers who, I suspect, equate two hooks to a hook with a barb or who think two punctures in a fish’s mouth are worse than one, without considering the damage a single hook will cause in comparison with sharing the forces involved in fighting a fish between two points instead of one. Many anglers are surprised to find, in fact, that flies tied on doubles nearly always come free with less effort than flies tied on a single-pointed hook. Of course, “barbless” means barbless, whatever style of hook you might use.

Finally, a few words about the color of the Gledswood. I doubt there’s any such thing as a black shrimp, but a look in all my many boxes of steelhead flies shows a preponderance of black flies. Or, better, dark flies. I don’t know if it really matters, but the line of reasoning has always been that when fish look up, everything is a silhouette. (Waking Muddlers, on the other hand, work because of the unnatural effect they have on the water’s surface, regardless the color of the fly.) Many an old-time steelheader — older, even, than I am — swore by the color purple; I’ve tied countless purple steelhead flies and never caught squat on them, probably because I nearly always turn to black when I think a dark pattern is in order, whether it’s a little Spey Car or a 3/0 Green Butt Spey. Nothing may matter less in steelheading than the color of your fly. That said, I do like a simple bold contrast between parts of a fly, and with its touch of sparkle, as well, the Gledswood Shrimp suggests to the angler, at least, that the fly won’t pass unnoticed should a fish be in a run.

Still, let’s be real: my enthusiasm for the Gledswood Shrimp has a lot to do with the fact that it was the pattern I used to catch my first and so far only Atlantic salmon. That may tell you as much as you need to know. There’s an old adage in steelhead lore that says you’ll use the fly you catch your first steelhead on for the rest of your life. In a game stingy with rewards, why would you walk away from something that finally works?

What matters most, besides, is that there are fish in the river in the first place.

Materials

Hook: Double, size 6 to 12

Thread: Red

Tag: Chartreuse wire, thread, or Veevus body quill

Tail: Black bucktail, plus two strands of gold Krystal Flash and two strands of copper Flashabou

Body: Gold holographic tinsel

Rib: Same as tag

Wing: Black arctic fox tail, plus two strands of gold Krystal Flash

Hackle: Yellow hen or other soft hackle

Eyes: Domestic jungle cock or artificial substitutes

Tying Instructions

Step 1: Double hooks can be a little hard to find unless you do business with UK suppliers. Dette Flies, in New York, generally has a limited selection, other shops less so. Secure the hook in the vise and start the thread. Cover the shank back to just above the hook points. Tie in the tag material and, working aft, create a pronounced tag at least one-sixteenth of an inch wide. Make the final wrap aft into the split between the two hook shanks, pull the tag material forward, under the fly, and tie off forward of the tag. Leave the excess tag material for ribbing the body later.

STEP 1
STEP 1

Step 2: You want the softest bucktail you can find for the tail. The trick is not to have the hairs flare when you secure them. Clean and stack a sparse bundle. Measure against the hook shank so that the tail ends up two to two and a half times as long. Once you have the tail secured, tie in a length of gold Krystal Flash, fold it, and create two strands that you can cut so that the tips extend about even with the tail. Then use the same method with the copper Flashabou, cutting it so that the tips end up just shy of the ends of the Krystal Flash.

STEP 2
STEP 2

Step 3: Starting at the root of the tail, tie in a length of gold holographic tinsel. Wrapping forward, create the body, making sure you cover the thread wraps at the root of the tail and that your tinsel wraps overlap one another. Tie off the tinsel at about one-third of the way back from the hook eye and trim the excess. Now cover the body with five or six evenly spaced turns of the wire or other material left over from the tag of the fly. Tie it off and clip the excess.

STEP 3
STEP 3

Step 4: For the wing, use a sparse clump of arctic fox dyed black — squirrel tail dyed black is a good substitute. I don’t stack the wing hair. Measure the hair so that the wing will extend to about the midpoint of the tail. Liberally wax the part of the thread that will first touch the hair — that will help keep the wing from spilling over the far side of the hook shank. Once the wing hair is secure, add two lengths of gold Krystal Flash and two lengths of copper Flashabou, just as you did for the tail.

STEP 4
STEP 4

Step 5: Select a soft-fibered yellow feather for the hackle. Tie it in by the tip with the good or shiny side facing forward. Fold the fibers and sweep them rearward while you make three or four turns, each turn forward the other. Catch the stem with a thread wrap and bind it securely. Clip the excess.

STEP 5
STEP 5

Step 6: For the fly shown here, I’ve used extra-small artificial jungle cock eyes by Semperfli. Tying them in place, I felt like I was adding flames to the fenders of a plastic model car. Atlantic salmon flies and countless other traditional British patterns call for jungle cock eyes, and the good news is that today, the birds are being raised domestically. On the other hand, raising them is turning out to be a lot harder than raising chickens. The fake eyes look OK, but if I weren’t trying to replicate a pattern that calls for jungle cock, I don’t know if I would mess with them. Once you’ve got the eyes in place, form a tidy head and saturate it with lacquer or your favorite head cement.

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