Olive Grizzly Chickaboo Body Marabou Patch

Olive Grizzly Ewing Chickabou Marabou Body Patch

Olive Grizzly is olive with a secret weapon: natural barring. Those dark bars read like the stripes on a crawfish leg, a sculpin’s flank, or a mantis shrimp’s tail. In clear water, where fish get a long look, barring is often the difference between a follow and an eat.

Olive Grizzly Ewing Chickabou gives you dense, barred marabou fibers for crawfish legs, shrimp tails, sculpin fins and Woolly Bugger tails. If you only buy one grizzly patch, buy this one.

Smallmouth, trout, carp, permit, bonefish and redfish all eat it.

Recipe 1: Olive Grizzly Chickabou Crayfish

• Hook: 3XL streamer, #4–#6 (tied to ride hook-point up)
• Eyes: Medium lead dumbbell, tied on top of the shank
• Thread: Olive 6/0
• Claws: Two Olive Grizzly Chickabou plumes, tied splayed at the bend
• Antennae: 2 strands black Krystal Flash or rubber legs
• Body: Olive-brown dubbing, with a palmered olive grizzly saddle trimmed flat on top
• Carapace: Olive Thin Skin or Scud Back, pulled over and ribbed

Tying:

Tie the dumbbell eyes on top so the fly flips and rides point-up. Splay the two chickabou plumes into a V for claws. They’ll open and close on every hop, just like a crawfish backing up.

How to fish:

Crawfish swim backward in short bursts. Cast upstream of rocky banks, let it hit bottom, then make sharp 6-inch strips with dead stops. Smallmouth eat it on the drop. Keep in touch with the line.

Recipe 2: Olive Grizzly Mantis Shrimp

• Hook: Saltwater #2–#4
• Eyes: Small lead or bead-chain, sized for depth
• Thread: Olive 6/0
• Tail: Olive Grizzly Ewing Chickabou, short tuft, plus 2 olive rubber legs
• Body: Olive-tan Ice Dub, with olive grizzly saddle palmered and trimmed underneath
• Back: Olive Thin Skin with a marker stripe

Tying:

Keep it slim and short — 1.5 inches overall. The chickabou tail is the fly’s motion; don’t overdress it.

How to fish:

On turtle-grass flats, lead permit or bonefish by 3–5 feet. Let it drop to the bottom, then one long, slow strip to puff mud, then let it sit. A mantis shrimp sits still and waits. When the fish tips down on it, strip-set.