Cereal Shrimp
Rick Ranalli's Cereal Shrimp
While surf fishing in South Carolina, I met a fellow fly fisherman on the beach. We were using shrimp gotten from the marsh for bait and catching a few fish. He told me he came up with an easy way to tie a shrimp pattern. He said the cover or carapace of the shrimp is hard to imitate with out using epoxy or some other glue, which makes the fly sink too fast. He started to think about a material that would look like the shell and also be tuff enough to use and not add weight, the bag inside a cereal box. He explained it took some time to get the shape of the material to look as he wanted but it is easy to tie and uses no epoxy. I have tied shrimp in sizes 6 to size 1 and have caught many different types of fish on his recipe for a shrimp fly. I have also changed the way the head is tied by dividing it in to 2 sections and the fly looks like a small lobster or crayfish.
INGREDIENTS:
  • Hook- size 6 on up to imitate size of shrimp you want
  • Eyes- small bead chain
  • Head and Antennas- bucktail or ultra hair in the color you want to match
  • Body- a few hackle's that match the color you want
  • Shell- cereal bag material cut in a bow-tie shape with one side smaller than other with a length of copper wire to separate the sections
RECIPE:
  1. Put hook in vice with point down as usual.
  2. Start thread at bend of hook and tie in bead eyes at the curve of the hook.
  3. Cut a small amount of ultra hair or bucktail and tie behind the eyes so it sticks past bend of hook to form the face of the fly.
  4. Tie in the wire and the hackles to form the body behind the ultra hair.
  5. Wrap thread to behind the eye of the hook.
  6. Wrap the hackles as you were making a wooly worm on the shank of the hook and leave the wire at the hook bend.
  7. Trim the top of the hook so the hackle looks like the legs of the shrimp and cover with the plastic from the cereal box and tie in behind the eye with the small end of the material covering the eye to look like a tail.
  8. Wrap the wire to the tie in point to form the segment like body
  9. Whip finish and coat thread with cement.