Been working with McFly Foam as a crab body material. My thanks to Pat at The Fly Shop for sending me the tying instructions for this pattern. Apparently it's killer for Permit (field testing to follow... )

Tie in dumbell eyes and legs on top of hook shank. (as an alternate, you can lay the legs on the bottom last step before putting sparkle body on underside, but I feel it looks more realistic and is easier to work with this way...)


Turn the hook over and tie in pieces of McFly Foam in the hook gap, all the way up the shank.


Use a bodkin to tease out the body material.


Slowy cut away excess material - go for a flat bottom and domed top. Turn hook back over and apply pliobond to bottom and set in mono eyes. Coat bottom with sparkle-body.


Tasty looking crab pattern. The McFly Foam is easy to work with and is a real improvement over yarn or wool IMO.

Nice pattern!
does it sink, float or be neutral?

Should sink and be fished on the bottom like a Merkin. (at least I hope so, or I didn't put a big enough dumbell on it... )

They work. Tie them small.

Greg,
Are these the flies you used at Blue Horizon?

Yes - that's the go-to fly for those guides. Everything hooked that week was on these (other anglers as well). One thing that is nice about these compared to your standard merkin, is that since the dumbell is completly sealed under the sparkle body, the fly does not tend to hang up on the bottom if you strip it. Some of the other crabs I had with exposed eyes were getting hung up a little more frequently.

Flatlander:
I never trust a tier when I can see the wood of his "desk". That said, nice fly.

Do you mean that it's free of clutter?

Not really - had to clear away a spot to take the pics....

Greg
They look great! and easy to tie....
How about some pics of the fish that bit them?

Jim - check my report in the travel forum - some pics of Lori's fish there. The bonefish and permit both hit the little ones that I made while I was down there. The ones pictured here were actually a little larger than what they wanted and the weight distribution was off a bit -probably needed bigger dumbells - when I stripped them, they did no ride true. The ones I made down there smaller (dime-size) and on smaller hooks rode true and produced the hookups.

One other thing that I did was alternate the colors of the McFly Foam to give some with a mottled look - they came out pretty cool.