Nutria shrimp
Most fly fishermen and -women know that shrimps are a major source of seatrout food. Of course, when the time is right, seatrout can go crazy on worms, sandeels or herring. But year round, they will feed on shrimps.
Shrimp patterns are often made with cdc, spey hackles, craft fur and many other materials. However, one of my favorite materials is Nutria. If you can find really long hair nutria (and yes it is very hard to get your hands on), your shrimps will behave so natural in the water like you have never seen before. Because of the bunch with long nutria in the front of the fly the shrimp will hang in the water perfectly. It is because of the “stifness” of the long nutria hairs, that this happens.
On this page you will find pictures with different nutria shrimps, two tying video’s, an underwater video where you can see the nutria shrimp swim and a fly fishing video which shows some spectacular catches (for example two 60 cm+ seatrout) with this shrimp. For those who like to cut their own cross cut zonker strips, there is also a video showing how to do so!
Click the images below to get a bigger picture of the pattern:
Here are links to the most important materials used in the video’s below:
- the Ahrex hook in size 6
- lead wire
- the (long hair!) nutria
- the eyes
- the shrimp shell in size medium
- dubbing
This pattern only works if you use long hair nutria. In my opinion Big streamers has the best quality around.
The nutria shrimp tied by Marco Wismeijer
The nutria shrimp tied by Mark Roovers
A “fast tie” by Hans Bock
In this video you can see how beautiful the nutria shrimp swims in the water
Let me take you on a nutria shrimp, sea trout fly fishing trip!
If you want to make your own zonker strips out of the patches nutria that you buy in the shop, watch this video:
To be able to cut the nutria like this, you need to create tension on the skin and a good cutting device
One afternoon me and my buddy found a stretch with a lot of small seatrout. They really couldn’t resist the nutria shrimp.
Jump in my belly boat and enjoy 5 minutes of fly fishing a Danish bay in November 2023. It really looks like fly fishing in a painting with these beautiful autumn colors and some sun rays now and then. I fished with a Nutria Shrimp at the point with a kopperbassen on the dropper. My thoughts were: temperature is dropping and maybe the seatrout wants small stuff…but they went fully for the Nutria shrimp.