I have been tying for about 2 years. And I have yet to find a crayfish pattern that looks like a true crayfish. I am looking for one that i simple yet looks very good! I want it to loo really realistic… But i dont want it to be too hard to tie.

PLEASE HELP ME!!!!

Well,i can’t really see any way out for you,if you want a really realistic pattern,it will be a difficult fly to do anyway,and may not work as well as a general representation pattern,you have to make up your mind what you want and take your skill level in to consideration when doing so.Dave Whitlock in his book,Aquatic Trout Food(Swan Hill Press 1994)gives a fairly easy pattern that he calls a soft-shelled cray-fish jig-fly that is fairly easy to do.hope this helps!

Jimmy is right you are stuck between simple tying and realism. Its usually a one or the other choice. A few months ago I came up with this one. It uses Nymph skin from Virtual Nymph. I’d consider it an easy tie but it would rate at least a four on Magnus’ tying skill scale.

If you want really realistic one there is a superb step by step here by Barry Ord Clark. In fact is blog is well worth following. There are some excellent patterns in there. It does, though, not qualify as simple tying!

I do have one which I do not intend giving you.  There is a huge selection of materials out there and pictures of crayfish of all sizes. I’m not being mean, what I am doing, hopefully, is getting you to expand your tying pleasure by coming up with a pattern yourself.  To me the greatest pleasure of tying flies/lures is sitting at a vice designing and scheming a new fly/lure and the imagination that it is going to be the be all and end all of all trout catchers.  Try it, have a go. It is not so difficult and I am sure you will get a great deal of pleasure from it.