Martyn White | Thursday, 28 December 2023
I hope everyone has had a pleasant an indulgent start to the festive period. I know I did. Unfortunately, I've since been struck down with some kind of lurgy, that's kept me indoors rather than out fishing. So this week I thought I'd write about a favourite flats fly of mine that I think is seriously underrated: Gorrels's Hackle Shrimp.
It's incredibly effective, especially on broken coral bottoms or sand with sparse grass, I have supreme confidence in the pattern and it's accounted for hundreds of bones for me in several locations, but it's not just effective as a a bonefish fly I've had several other species too. It has a lot going for it, from a tyer's perspective it's a quick fairly easy tie, only needs a couple of materials, can easily be tied to match different bottom colours and is pretty durable. When it comes to fishing, it always lands the right way up, is fairly weedless even without a guard, runs true when pulled and will generally rest on top of turtle grass or other weeds rather than disappearing down into it. With all flies, just catching fish isn't enough for me to call it good, if it takes an hour to tie but falls apart after a couple of fish I'm not interested. But the Gorrel's has it all, it's as close to perfect as it get in my opinion.
I never see it in magazines or online articles, in fact, the only place I've seen it published is in Dick Brown's Bonefish Flies. I'm not sure why it doesn't seem to be that popular, possibly there's an issue with it being a bit different from the usual Charlie/Gotcha type profiles that we see in most bonefish flies. Or possibly the incumbent popularity of those flies creates a cycle, if they are what people fish, they are what people catch on. I think too that at first glance it doesn't necessarily look that much like a shrimp to a human eye might be a part of it, but actually when viewd from a fish's perspective it really checks the prey image box, it's a little translucent, a little mottled and it moves and quivers a little at rest before darting away "escaping" on the strip.
Anyway, I love the Gorrel's and if you have the chance to fish it on your next flats trip, I'm sure you will too.
Here's the dressing
Hook: Gamakatsu SL11-3H or similar
Thread: Tan, olive, pink or cream 140 denier flat waxed
Weight: Bead chain
Antennae: crystal flash
Body:Saddle hackle( grizzle, tan or grizzly olive are good)
Belly: Crystal flash