Rattle prawn

 

This is quite a realistic prawn or shrimp imitation and incorporates a little bit of flash and a rattle in the body. Its particularly useful as a salt water polaroiding fly when just a twitch is often enough inducement for a strike and in murky water where a stop start strip gets the rattle working. I tie it in  Root Beer / Pearl, Olive / Chartreuse and Pink / pearl but other colour combinations also work.

Materials

Hook Thread Sieves and mouth parts Rattle Legs Body Eyes
Size 2 Stainless Steel Clear monofilament Pearl Flash, Krystal Flash or equivalent Glass rattle with two shot Palmered hen hackle Superhair Plastic bead chain or burnt monofilament

Process

A
  1. Wind the thread in touching turns from the 95% position to the bend of the hook.
  2. Tie in a bunch of  Pearl Flash, Krystal Flash or equivalent at the bend of the hook with tips extending forward and backward about the same distance.

B
  1. Take the tips of the Pearl flash or equivalent material that extend toward the rear over the top of the tips that face forward and tie then off so as to double up the amount of sieves and mouth parts facing forward.

C
  1. Tie a rattle chamber along the hook shank as far forward as possible.
  2. Mix a small amount of 5 minute epoxy and put a smear along the join of the hook shank and the rattle chamber.

D
  1. Tie a hackle in in front of the rattle chamber. A woolly bugger shaped hackle is ideal for this fly.

E
  1. Take three wraps of the hackle where the hackle is tied in and then palmer it along the rattle chamber forming 3 or four segments.
  2. Tie the hackle off behind the rattle chamber and trim the excess hackle.
  3. Trim the hackle off flat with the top of the rattle chamber. It is important to Palmer the hackle neatly to form uniform body segments and to trim the hackle evenly because the Palmered hackle segments show through the epoxy giving the appearance of segments on the fly.
  4. Take the thread to the eye od the hook.

F
  1. Select a bunch of superhair about twice as thick as a match stick.
  2. Tie the bunch of superhair in tightly at the eye of the hook.
  3. Lift the but of the superhair up and whip finish at the eye of the hook and trim the thread.

G
  1. Mix up an amount of 5 minute epoxy  that would be equal in volume to say a pea.
  2. Pull the super hair forward and down so that it spreads evenly around the rattle chamber and so that  the  bottom fibres are level with the shank of the hook.
  3. Using a tooth pick  (or your weapon of choice)  apply the  epoxy to the super hair  between the bend of the hook and the eye of the hook.
  4. Place a set of plastic bead chain eyes above the bend of the hook and put just one drop of epoxy on them to lock teem into position.
  5. The hardest part in tying this fly is holding the  superhair  in this  position  whilst the  epoxy goes off.

H
  1. If required as the first coat of epoxy is just going off you can wet your finger tips and  push the  gelatinous epoxy into its final setting position.
  2. When the first coat has gone off mix a second smaller amount of epoxy  and  apply that to the  body of the fly this time  paying particular attention to  putting more over the chord joining the two eyes and just in front of the eyes and making sure you put a drop of epoxy on the whip finishing of the thread.
    Rotate the fly until the epoxy goes off.
  3. When the epoxy is dry  whilst holding a couple of the top superhair fibres out of place trim the mouth parts and the balance of the superhair upward at an angle.
  4. The couple of longer superhair fibres that you held out of the way represent the feelers of the prawn.



Last Updated: January 15, 2011
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Categories: Flies, Saltwater - estuary, Saltwater - tropical
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