One Mallard Shrimp

In the wild

Martin Joergensen

We had been fishing for a few spring days in the southern part of Denmark, and not caught much, but had some fun and some small fish.
Paul, a German/American friend, kept one, nice, bright sea trout, and when he gutted it, he found two large, almost undigested shrimp in its stomach.
No big surprise there, because we had seen the shrimp in the fairly cold spring water and it's also a fact that the Danish sea trout have shrimp high on their menu - if not on top - especially in the spring where many other food sources are scarce.
In the type of fjord where we were fishing, the shrimp are some of the first animals to start buzzing around in the shallow water as soon as the sun starts heating it up just a bit.

So a shrimp fly or several should always be in the flybox of an angler who is seeking the spring sea trout in the Baltic.

Other people can fish pink and paintbrushes. To each his own.

Paul

Henning Eskol

Large and colorful shrimp patterns are very common, and I have expressed my opinion about the most common ones several times. I am not the type who ties on a large, pink paintbrush and calls it a shrimp imitation.
A pink paintbrush, yes, but a shrimp, no!
No doubt they can catch fish and have done so many, many times, but it's nothing that I find attractive even though the fish might. I prefer my shrimp smaller, grayish and a little more discrete and looking like the natural.

Other people can fish pink and paintbrushes. To each his own.

I had already been fooling around with mallard feathers on that same trip. Paul had actually brought a whole bag full of nice, large and regular feathers from mallard and gadwall, and I thought that one such feather ought to be able to produce a shrimp. The light barred barbs are fine for antennae, mouth parts, legs and the plumulaceous part at the base is excellent for dubbing. I added some Easy Shrimp Eyes and a bit of flash plus some LCR to make a shell, and the recipe for a nice shrimp was there.
This fly wound up so simple that it ought to be called Martin's Mundane Mallard Shrimp in accordance with the Mundane Manifesto. But it ended as the One Mallard Shrimp, but still only uses three materials. The hook is a Kamasan B175, so exchange the thread for black and you are almost there. The store bought eyes are special and might be hard to get, but simple, cheap, home made mono eyes can easily do the trick.

One feather

Martin Joergensen

Inspired by

Martin Joergensen

The One Mallard Shrimp

Martin Joergensen

From one feather you will get barbs for the shrimp's thorn, the fluffy part will make some excellent dubbing for the body and the remaining barbs can be wound as a hackle that will form shell and legs.You can use mallard, teal, gadwall or any other finely barred feather with the same long, fine barbs and a fluffy, downy part to provide dubbing.
The fly is really easy to tie, and the only advanced step is using Light Curing Resin for the shell, and even that is easy.

Step 1 - thread	Step 2 - flash	Step 3 - position flash
Step 4 - one mallard feather	Step 5 - tail/thorn	Step 6 - tail in place
Step 7 - trim	Step 8 - dubbing	Step 9 - eye support
Step 10 - eyes	Step 11 - tie in eyes	Step 12 eyes done
Step 13 - more dubbing	Step 14 - dub	Step 15 - prepare the feather
Step 16 - tie in	Step 17 - ready to wrap	Step 18 - pull barbs
Step 19 - wrap	Step 20 - form head	Step 21 - cut thread
Step 22 - pull hackle	Step 23 - add LCR	Step 24 - cure
Step 25 - more LCR	Step 26 - trim flash	Done

Martin Joergensen

Shrimp flies are supposed to fish fairly deep, and over water depths in the 1-2 meter range or some 3-6 feet deep it should actually be on the bottom or at least close. That might call for a bit of weight, and adding some heavy wire under the body can be necessary unless you want to wait for the fly to sink or use an intermediate or sinking leader.
Shrimp are usually slow moving animals that hover gently over the bottom, rocks or sea weed, but once they are disturbed, they shoot off in a blitz fast jerk. You can partly mimic that with a steady and slow retrieve broken by some sudden, short pulls in the fly line.

You can tie the fly with the barred feathers from any of these birds. The One Gadwall Shrimp, The One Mallard Shrimp and the One Teal Shrimp. I don't think the fish will care.

Gadwall

Mallard

Teal

Wikimedia - MDF - Wikimedia - Mihael Grmek - Wikimedia - Dick Daniels

I don't think the fish will care.