Flats Craft How it started

This started in mid 2019

To be honest... like many people I was reluctant to entertain the thought of a semi realistic fly tying product, my whole life I was all about those natural materials. But like most innovators, I had to get them to rule out if they were any good or not any good. We were introduced to this method of manufacture by a Spanish company, the company clearly had Saltwater intentions, but perhaps with being based in Madrid, was yet to feed their products to a fish at this stage. Upon importing these products, I learned that aesthetics was not enough for these, they had to interact with the hook and other materials well whilst performing as expecting in the water, it became apparent very early on that drag played a much larger role than weight did and because of that, not every design was suitable as a fly. A few fish were caught, but realistically, not many at all. At the time, the products had very little support in the Australian fly fishing community, and were often ridiculed by other fly fishing industry types, mostly in a very vocal fashion to anyone who would listen. It was clear that the industry as whole had a very narrow minded look onto these and saw them purely for their aesthetics and assumed ease of use, but a few open minded guys saw the potential in these so we all persisted. 

2020, A friend of mine (Geoff Volter), floated the idea of if we could get a Moon Crab design made. So we ( Geoff and I) sat down gave it some thought and approached my then supplier for 3 sizes of legs with a carapace to match. After a few revisions in design and some time on the water before the world saw anything, the Moon Crab was released. This design was clunky, it involved a lot of glue and at the time, a flattened ball sinker with a  lashed on crossmember of sorts to try and stop the hard material from spinning in the crusher plates of a permit, and therefore closing the gape. It did have its advantages over a more traditional Moon Crab fly that was often made with wind resistant and absorbent material. These modern materials weighed the same wet or dry, and were far less wind resistant. Yes, it was great to have something that replicated the aesthetics of a real Moon Crab, but real anglers knew, that this meant nothing it is flipped on the descent, twisted and closed the gape on the eat, or if it was uncast able or, ridiculous to tie. Luckily, in the past, the lengths that people had gone to for success with tying a Moon Crab fly, was already extreme ( Neil Sheppard's famous Moon Crab, a 1 hour tie), so 20 mins was easily accepted.

Still in 2020, this original Moon Crab caught fish a pretty decent amount of fish, it was getting hard to ignore its success on Permit, that at the time were still a fish of a lifetime, but another friend of mine called Gavin Davis was about to adapt the Moon Crab legs to an existing crab fly of his that would change everything.

Gavin Davis is an Australian flybum living in Hervey Bay QLD. In saying that he's definitely no hobo, the term affectionally describes Gavin's all consuming thoughts about his flyfishing pursuits. Gavin had a pattern that I had seen evolve from having a dense brush tied in flat as a carapace with rubber bands for legs to, cutting up random chunks of rubber for a carapace with chenille legs, to using flexo tube (unexpanded) as a carapace with the chenille legs, to what is a version of what we see now which is the Moon Crab legs under a flat carapace of flexo tube. It is probably my fault that this thing took a year before anyone saw it, I used to criticize Gavin's innovation by challenging him to show me it working, or explain how it works. The good thing about the Australian fly tying culture, is that with guys who can fish or tie flies to assist their fishing (like Gavin), it common for these flies to only be known in small circles until they have been proven. 

Fast Forward to 2021.. It was about maybe around May when I really started to come around to this pattern, I remember contacting Gavin and remarking that what he has done is pretty bloody clever. Admittedly, it took me a while to understand "the why" as to how this fly was landing hook point up every time. Once I understood that the drag was what was doing it, and not the weight, and how the leader was also assisting the hook point up descent, I was all in !! Prior to that I could see it working, but couldn't explain why, and in my recollection, Gavin knew how to make it happen but couldn't explain why either. It was at that point I called it the Gavs Crab... it was definitely unique enough to warrant its own name, and it was proving consistent on the water when looking for a Crab fly that is easy to cast and lands hook point up. I changed the hook selection and introduced the tungsten putty to replace the Avalon style weight Gavin had, but these are only addons that happen in a great community when we have innovators like Gavin to lead the way. 

In September 2021, I packed a range of Gavs Crabs with me on a trip to fish the Hinchinbrook Channel with Dave Bradley of Australian Fly Fishing Outfitters. I was actually Dave's last trip before retirement. It was a horrible week of weather... 30-35knt winds, driving rain and dirty water. The goal for the trip was an Anak Permit. Dave and I watched the forecasts over some Rums after fishing each day and saw a break in the cloud forecast on Windy.com that would give us a 3 hour window to feed a permit right at the end of the scheduled week of fishing. Tied on was a fly that had never caught a Permit (small Gavs Crab), on the bow was an Angler who had only caught one permit prior (a decade prior), and on the pole was a captain who was hoping like hell that we would see something. Fast forward into an hour of fishing (watching) a single permit presents itself, the cast was made, the fish tips, it eats.. the fish was landed and that fish would start a sensation that the Australian Permit scene had never seen before. Side note, we didn't see another Permit the rest of the trip.. one chance and the Gavs Crab got it done 

In coming months many many more permit would eat a Gavs Crab... Aussie Permit went from a fish of a lifetime to when using a Gavs Crab, a fish that would probably eat if it saw it. You got to understand though, it wasn't the way it looked that did all the damage, it was the tying method, the way the legs articulated ( or equally lack of ) in the water, it was a fly that you can cast fast without bulk false casts, it lands soft and it lands, sinks and swims level with a hook point up.. Those points are the successes to the Gavs Crab. 

Sept 2022 and for the past 12 months stock of these legs was super limited, our supplier who was clear in the beginning about this being a hobby was getting pumped with orders from us. Orders were taking months, communication dwindles to a point were our orders weren't getting even replied to and our messages on social media were getting left on read. At this point, were were struggling with the ethics of our own manufacturing, it was something I deliberated on and asked many trusted friends advice on for a few months. on the downlow, we decided to manufacture packs for the pro's and not sell retail to give our supplier a chance to catch up or even communicate with us, without giving up all the hard work that myself and guys like Geoff and Gavin had put in. At this point, a lot of the guys who were vocally against these legs in the beginning, had come around, they could see that this fly wasn't as easy as slapping some flexo tube and some legs on a hook and when done right, was deadly on Permit. 

Dec 2022, at this point our relationship with the original supplier was dead and buried, all we were getting was crickets, we had to make our own designs... Put simply, there simply no way were going to get product of our old supplier, so I went into design. Having learned so much from fishing the Gav's Crab and looking at Gav's Crabs differently compared to traditionally tied Crab flies in that the weight is not the most important thing, I went on to design a range that used the hydrodynamics of the finished fly to further advantage the success of the design with great early on success. I didn't have to wait long before the "Mark III" of the new design was perfect in that it did everything you want a Crab fly to do. In January 2023, Flats Craft was born and presented to the public. Shortly after and not without private testing, other patterns such as the Mutineers, the Manadclawrian came to be. Shortly after that we collaborated with Al Simson for the Ketta Crab, and not long after that the Merculese then the worlds first articulated claw fly tying product the ArtiMerc. The most recent addition is "The Claw" that is designed within the original principles outlined in the Dave Skok strong arm merkin. 

Like any great product, we have had our copy cats.. many will know we were the first in the world to feed these products to fish... some of our copy cats don't even fish and are skating along on the Flats Craft community's success, some of them only have one product and are the only ones (despite wide distribution) to catch fish on them, arguably their products are born of envy,  given how vocal they were about how they think our products are so terrible, right up to when they had a product of their own.... that's life I guess.  A big part of me feels sorry for the guys that helped put the yards into both developing a market and a product. Some of these guys who copy cant even bring themselves to credit Gavin after clearly ripping off his Gav's Crab.. probably tells a a lot about their character. It takes a lot from both manufacturer and those contributors to the products success, to have 90% of the industry publicly scoff at your direction, and yet still tie them on and risk your hard earned time on the water, only to eventually after results are achieved,  then watch poor products erode the magic of what has been created.

At the end of the day, The Flats Craft products have helped many people achieve their goal of catching a Permit. Flats Craft designs have caught all 4 major Permit species and may more crab eating species, and that's the positive driving force that grows Flats Craft. Customer feedback has been awesome, the community surrounding us has been nothing but positive and I am stoked to have such skilled and smart contributors that offer their insights available to us for the designs that work so well for you. 

 Pictured - Este Burgess with her first Permit. Caught on a Gavs Crab

Its been a special journey that now sees the Flats Craft products in 4 countries and soon to be more.

If your a shop owner or you know a shop owner who will fit in with our journey, please reach out to us at FlatsCraft@gmail.com and we would love to have you as part of the crew

Thanks for reading - Chris Adams / Owner