I really like that crab...trimming the deer hair would give it a more defined body shape. Very cool effect with the ribbon though. If it's not tough enough maybe wrap ribbon around wire?

Yes, good work Michael, especially the last two.

I have been a fan of Crab flies but the legs have never looked Right. Your Crab is a beaut Good One!! Michael, and those shrimps are not to be sneezed at either.  Good Flies.Good Fishing. Jax

Thanks for all the kind comments guys, i actually got to test them today
was going to hit an open surf beach on the Awhitu peninsula, but the swell made it too rough, so we went to the south head of the Manukau. for about 2 hours either side of high tide the place was un-fishable, the swell, wind and current meant that even a 6oz. sinker on 15lb line wasn't holding, and the best fishing was during the low tides (the evening was very nice actually no wind or swell). I rigged another crab fly i tied (same as the one shown, but spun around on the hook by 90 degrees to it faces the bend of the hook, the reason being so i can add a piece of bait and it looks like the crab is eating it ) and a shrimp ontop of a sort-of ledger rig. 80lb fluro backbone with 40lb tough trace droppers, rapala loops to let the flies move. I also constructed a mini berly cage out of a plastic hair curling tube thingie, but the way i rigged it didn't stand up, so back to the drawing board with that. The crab picked up a few kahawai and was baited with either salted blue mack or eating-grade squid, the shrimp accounted for 2 of the 4 Gurnard caught at 39 & 48cm (the other 2 taking the old tried and ture 1/2 pillie on another rod) I'm stoked with that because it was seeing shrimps in gurnard guts caught in the same reigon which gave me the idea for doing it. I think the crab didn't pick up much due to the current, it didn't sit very well with high current from what i saw (had a tendancy to spin and wobble weirdly ) but hey it was designed for open beach, not the manukau mouth!! I think the shrimp could have done more damage on gurnard had it been rigged on the bottom, as gurnard aren't keen of leaving the bottom esp in high current areas but i wanted to see if the crab might get a big gurnard instead . casting that with a 6oz. sinker was great, flew very nicely with virtually all the weight of the rig being in the sinker.

One thing to note was that the place seemed to be crawling with eagle rays, i got 5 of the buggers, all on 1/2 pillie, i like when 1 pops up to brighten a slow day, but 5 is just silly and takes up alot of rod time, the flies didn't get any of them.

That's precicely how i have my other rig, except it's more like a running rig on the bottom baited with 2 fixxed hooks in a 1/2 pillie. I've found using the rapala loop to attach the fly give it more freedom to move, i'm going to start playing with foam on the flies next to see if i can get bouyancy and perhaps some fish like action while keeping a decent looking outline to the fly and without having a seperate float sitting right infront of it.

Has anyone on here seen any Gamakatsu SC16 hooks around (long shanked circle hook with a nickle finish)

Nice work alright MJ...some definite artistic skill there with those flies