The World's Best Crayfish Fly: Joe Goodspeed's Mini Cray Jig

Joe's Mini Cray is the best crayfish imitation we've ever seen. It was designed by Joe many years ago to target large, tricky wild trout that weren't eating other food sources in the river systems he was fishing. After a lot of time on the water he realized that there was an abundance of juvenile crayfish in many of these rivers, so he deduced that they must be eating them. Boy, was he right. After development and refinement this fly proceeded to fool countless large brown trout for many seasons to follow, and has done so for anglers around the country as well. One of the major keys to this fly is in the way it thumps on the bottom creating the same noise and action as a real crayfish.

Joe Goodspeed has been working in the fly fishing industry since 2008. First he was a fly line producer, and now he's a fly rod developer. He's responsible for designing some of the best euro nymphing rods available on the market today. Joe is an exceptional subsurface fly angler—whether that be nymphs or streamers—and has an incredibly analytical mind when it comes to fly design. Every single component to his flies is added with intention, and there's nothing extra. Plus, he designs for his flies to be durable so that you can catch fish after fish without them taking too much wear.

00:00 Introduction
00:20 Adding weight to the body
01:34 Dubbing the body with our NEW Voodoo Streamer Dub
01:59 Adding tentacles
02:45 Adding our NEW Rabbit Zonker
03:10 Making the crayfish claws
04:56 Properly tying in the crayfish claws
05:49 Wrapping the body with schalppen
06:36 Loosely dub the body again
07:36 Trimming the schlappen
07:54 Tying in the shellback
09:19 Seating the shellback over the eye of the hook
10:06 Finishing the fly
11:09 Flattening the fly
12:00 Joe shares his design thoughts behind his Mini Cray

If you want to buy Joe's Mini Cray or get the materials to tie it, you can find them here on our website. The version in this video is tied with a lead jig, but you can tie them with tungsten beads and lead wraps as well: https://www.fullingmill.com/Products-...

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