Once in the river, the suede fabric absorbs water, gets a little darker and takes on a very natural looking “leathery” appearance. The suede becomes softer, resulting in much more action from the free-moving crayfish claws. These flies need to be fished deep, on the bottom where crayfish typically hide. Tie your flies in a hook upwards position and use lead wraps on the shank or a dumbbell to weight the fly. For the medium sized CrawBody, another option is to use a small size Sculpin Helmet (which is luckily about the same profile and size as a real crayfish head).
There are two basic sizes (small & medium). The small size will be a suitable size to match with #8 or #6 streamer (4XL) hooks and the medium size will be a suitable size to match with a #4 or #2 streamer (4XL) streamer hook tied upside down.
During testing they proved to be extremely effective, especially for trout and smallmouth bass. We suspect the key success factors are a combination of 3 main factors:
- Profile — the correct body shape allows fish to instantly recognize a known food source.
- Movement — the synthetic suede claws have a realistic action in the water.
- Weight — weighting the fly properly gets the fly down into the place where fish would expect to see crayfish
8 CrawBodies per package. In brown and olive