Branham’s Redfishy Shrimp
History:
My Redfish Shrimp is a spin off of my Epoxy Shrimp. The only differences are that I use buck tail instead of the synthetic hair and I coat the shellback with DYNAFLEX 230.
During the early to middle 1990’s, my Epoxy Shrimp was becoming one of the go to flies for Bonefishing. I was asked to develop a larger version of this pattern for use as a redfish fly.
Initially I just made a larger version of the Epoxy Shrimp but this proved to be extremely heavy and caused quite a splash when it landed. I also could not get the Ultra Hair in the colors that I really needed so I changed the Ultra Hair to buck tail. I also covered the shellback with liquid rubber instead of epoxy.
The Redfish Shrimp was initially tied with claws of buck tail. I gave some to Lefty and his feedback was that the claws were very stiff and caused the fly to rotate when stripped. He suggested to use hackle tips for the claws. The hackle tips worked very well but eventually, I wa told that the Redfish Shrimp did not need to have claws, so the claws were dropped from the pattern.
These changes worked very well. The major problem was that the liquid rubber that I was working with was hard to find so I again changed the shellback coating. I started using silicone as the coating and that proved very successful.
In the middle to late 1990’s Umpqua put this fly under contract. Umpqua did not follow the exact dressing in that they tied the fly and used epoxy as the coating. As I had discovered, it proved to be too heavy and they dropped the fly after several years.
The fly had developed into the standard version that is weighted and an unweighted version as well. The unweighted version was the result of someone asking me to develop a floating shrimp for when the tarpon were slurping shrimp from the surface.
When I retired from commercial tying in 1995, I did not follow up on any of my flies and things fell by the wayside.
In 2001, I started www.saltwaterflytying.com and got back into tying some flies. I was hearing a lot about large shrimp patterns and decided to work on my Redfish Shrimp and see what would happen.
In 2003, as a remodeling contractor, we used a lot of sealants in my business and one day it dawned on me that I had the perfect product for coating just about any fly in lieu of epoxy and silicone. It was a water based sealant so it could be cleaned up with water instead of harsh chemicals, was easy to work with and extremely durable. This product was manufactured by DAP. It is DYNAFLEX230 in clear.
I now use this product exclusively in place of silicone and in some cases, epoxy.
The Redfish Shrimp can be tied in numerous colors and sizes. Use the color(s) and sizes that work best in your area. Brown, olive, tan and gray have been very productive colors for everything from redfish to tarpon.