El Crawcito

Cheech - April, 2015

"Hey... You want to borrow this stuff for a while?" Little did Bryan Gregson know that he was rekindling some very bassy spirits that lived deep within my soul. I gladly accepted the Shimano Curado (the green one... the GOOD one) and 6'6" baitcasting rod as items that would be on loan for the next 5 years. See, when I first really started getting into fishing I had one of those donut shaped float tubes that would take me where the bass lived. I was in heaven. Casting a bright shiny spinnerbait along the reeds while getting eaten by mosquitoes was my preferred way to spend a day. After Gregson lent me the baitcaster nearly 8 years after I sold all of my conventional gear, it was a 100% relapse even though I developed into a somewhat decent fly tyer and fisher... Something about sticking a pig largemouth on a Texas rigged lizard through 3 feet of pure salad made me forget about fishing mayfly hatches on the river. Ever since that time I have spent roughly 50% of my time pursuing Bassish creatures with the heathen gear. I loved it then, and I love it now (one of these times you should see the jigs that I make... )

I have preached this before, but fishing with conventional gear made me a better fisherman and a much better fly tyer. I learned stuff about how fish eat and how to present flies to bass that I would never have dared with a fly. I also learned that there are things that you can do with a lure that are just plain impossible with a fly. We can get close... but flies have limits. Limits in sight, I wanted to create a good craw imitation that would ride similar to a weeldess jig with a plastic trailer (some might call it a jig n' pig, but there is no pork on this rig). The keys to a good jig are that they fall into place properly (varied weight for different circumstances) and that when they sit still, the legs flare out, and the claws are up in a defensive position. Easy right?? Not really. It took many prototypes to finally dial this to where it is, and it will probably go through several more alterations. What I came up with though is a pretty meaty little bug that rides just how I imagined it should. It also has a dual weighting system that can be tinkered with to tie flies all the way from a slow falling finesse craw to a fast falling mill stone. It can also be modified in all types of weedless variations.

The El Sculpito has been one of our best fly patterns, so I stole its chassis and built a more fancy bug on it. I wanted a bug that had a lot of rabbit, a lot of silicon legs, and a lot of attitude. Check out the video to see that this bug isn't necessarily a difficult bug to tie, and you will likely tie several in a row, so grab your favorite cold beverage, crank up some good tunes, and glue your butt to your tying station.

~ Cheech