BAHAMAS BONESHRIMP

There are plenty lean and mean Bonefish shrimp patterns out there in the world of fly tying.
You have swimming shrimp, classy bitters with their epoxy body and rubber legs, mini puffs that just seem to imitate tiny critters that dwell on the surf's floor, Ruoffs Absolute Flea that has become somewhat of a legend in the Keys and McQuades Banded Shrimp, a truely lifelike looking pattern that confuses Permit and Bones alike in Mexico and Belize.

Tied them all and more, but after five neat and disciplined copies of one pattern I like to to tie something that is more or less mine and that just might work. I will get my chance to prove it come April when I will be teasing the bones on Eleuthera's shores in the Bahamas. So here is the Esox Boneshrimp. Fingers crossed and blessed be.


I once did an article on a suspending shrimp pattern tied on a circle hook. The floating shrimp would be fished on a sinking line, with a small amount of tungsten putty on the tippet. Just so that the shrimp would hover right above the ground. It proved to be a very effective way to entice fish. The circle hook will ensure the fish hooking itself once it takes of with the shrimp.


[Below] In the schedule of this particular pattern 'H' would be a piece of high boyant pinkish foam that would ensure the final shrimp pattern to float like cork. One would need to be sparse on the epoxy coating as that material, however nice the finish, will make a fly sink.
The arsenal of course has a lot more in the box than crabs and shrimps alone. Although I do mean to go into the whole 'shrimping business' with my buddy Bubba...

Common prawn - Palaemon serratus