Playing Around

[hays47]

Ball Head is tied with zonked squirrel and estaz. Shrimp-like creatures used some swiss straw and rubber legs. Was messing with zonked squirrel , mink ,fox, and chinchilla and of course rabbit today.

Next project going to be some baby crayfish.

[AtticaFish]

Really like that pink one! Cool design, I may give that one a try in a dif color. What size hook/wt. on the hourglass eyes? I wanna see those craws too... I make attempts at them pretty often. :D

Chinchilla huh??? I've been messing with more rabbit, may post pics later tonight.

[hays47]

Yeah Russ I kinda like the pink one too. Used boar hair for legs . "pretty in pink "for chennile,used a little tuft of rabbit fur for tail then rounded with curved scissors. 1/40 oz lead hourglass eyes. Hook is a 4x long streamer hook size 10.

Story behind small crayfish , Uncle and I were going to a pay lake famous for its big gills.
We stopped at one of his hot spots for bait as he wanted to take minnows with him too. We seined our butts off and didn't even have 2 dozen minnows. As he smoked a cigarette and was taking a break I run the seine up thru this weedbed.

Didn't get minnow one but the seine was full of weeds and little tiny crayfish. He came over to look at them and said hold on. Ran up to car and got an old cigar box. He grabbed a couple handfuls of weeds and crayfish and stuffed into box. We get to lake and I used to love walking on this old roadbed that was sunken. It was about waist deep but but went down to about 8-9 ' off each side.

Watched a couple guys with flyrods working the same side we were on and they were not having any luck. I was using a fly rod but instead of fly I used those tiny craws on a # 12 hook. Stood on very edge of road bed ( could feel with toes ) and dropped crayfish in off side of the bed. I think the longest I had to wait for a bite was 10 seconds. Caught all sizes but once I hit forty keepers thats all I wanted to clean. Uncle borrows my setup and does same thing but he keeps more.

He pulls car around and we ice down our catch. Pull up to office and guy that runs lake takes about 1/2 dozen pictures. He was more thrilled than we were.

I think we actually seined these crayfish shortly after they hatched. About as long as fingernail on little finger and almost translucent with a greenish hue. Never lucked out like that before and have not since. But I often wondered how a jiggy would do in place of them.

[FishinAddict]

I like the farright ball head, I will have to try that!

[LOVINFISHING]

really nice looking tyes Hays47 good job

[Fatman]

Like the 2 ball head jigs, the others I'd have to throw on a fly rod

Fatman

[AtticaFish]

Hope you don't think I'm hi-jacking you thread here, but wanted to show you these. Top one is on an aberdeen hook (maybe #2 or #4??) and think I got carried away with all the materials. :D Will probably spin on my line like a SOB! Used the top part of a marabou for the shell back. Then started working with raffia for shell backs on the others and like them alot better. Rest are on #6 & #8 bait holder hooks. Plan was for smallies but will shoot them at some crappies in the spring also.

[hays47]

No one can hi-jack one of my threads. I never did care which direction the conversation takes :D

I am hunting thru my materials ( I got a pile of it ) looking for like a translucent green. That story about the baby crayfish occured over 45 years ago. But I can still see those hundreds of tiny crayfish crawling all over that seine. Their color was also burned into my brain. Probably won't be able to match exactly but would like to come as close as possible.

One thing I don't remember is ever catching a crappie on a crayfish of any size. Not saying they don't eat them just never caught one on a crawdad.

Will post pics of my little craw daddies if I can find right color. Going to tie some little brown ones anyway.