Legs Crayfish Fly

Before I say anything about the Legs Crayfish I want to say thank you Mr.P for his post on my Rough Dub Squirrel Tail Crayfish!
…I was having some thoughts tonight about something entirely different but came back to the rough dub craw. I was thinking some legs would be nice! I started out with a single piece of sparkle yarn tied in Merkin Crab style. It turned out just OK.

Rough Dub with Sparkle Legs

I tried another with some ?Rust Brown EP fibers. This time I used two sparser clumps, one tied in mid shank and one more towards the bead chain eyes, I also added just a couple pieces of squirrel tail for antennae. After making my first couple dubbing wraps I pulled the first set of legs back and secured them in place with the next wrap of dubbing, then pulled back the final pair secured them and finished the fly.

Legs Craw with EP

All in all not too bad, I certainly have some more tweaking to do. The EP fibers are a great match for the body color and I could get away using EP fibers for the claws too or basically just do away with the squirrel claws.

On a technical note: When doing multiple sets of legs and dubbing between them…its often easiest to pull the set closest to the eyes forward to the eye and “tie” down loosely with two wraps of your thread, then pull back the next set and do the same, and so on until you can manage to start dubbing the fly. Then as you go release the held down sets of legs as you need. It works for me anyway and might help a guy or two out when trying to manage a fly with lots of legs.

One more before bed…