In early spring, when the mud flats begin to warm, the crabs will resurface and begin to forage and spawn as they have for eons. Crabs spend a good amount time on the bottom scavenging up a meal.  Many crabs, as well as the misnamed horseshoe crab who is more closely related to ticks,spiders and scorpions than crabs, spawn on the beach or right or right where water and beach meet.  Some crabs are also found  drifting from one place to another, after all, it is much faster than crawling across an entire bay. Juvenile and pre juvenile crabs also drift out of the back bay on new and full moons when the tides are highest. The flies below are all unweighted, though they can be easily weighted by adding some lead or tungsten wire to the shank, and are considered swimmers save the two spun deer hair flies that float on the or in the surface.  These flies should all be dead drifted and constantly taking out any slack in the line.  The takes will be gentle and if there is any slack in he line, the hits will go unnoticed.

When using a swimming crab, ask this question:  where in the water column are the crabs?  If there are no takes in the top one or two feet, then add one or two split shot or loop in a foot or two lead core to get the fly down to the lower one or two feet. Keeping the weight on the line will bring down the fly without imparting a jigging action.  Jigging action does not resemble the way a crab swims or drifts.

I am not going to state that crabs are found swimming only at night because I have seen big and little crabs swimming during the day. However, their appearance is far greater at night and the stripers are hunting at night closer both to shore and to the surface to make these mainly night fishing flies.  I will make one exception for flats with strong current during the day. Since boat traffic is limited in these areas the stripers are around and crabs will be swept  along in the strong current.

These patterns are in one way or another based on the General Practitioner's construction.  There are numerous layers and collars of feather of all types, including guinnea hen, marabou, grouse, golden pheasant breast feathers, silver pheasant and saddle hackle. Some use coyote tail, claws are made from golden pheasant or hen hackle.  Some have seal dubbed on the shank.