Gary Lafontaine, on page 31 of his seminal book Caddisflies, states that there are two stages during the emergence that the fish concentrate on. One is when the pupa are cutting themselves out of their cases and the other when they are stuck at the film during emergence.
I believe that virtually all emerging insects have a problem penetrating the film or menicus. We think of the meniscus as the film that supports our flies BUT in reality it is a tough barrier in both directions. The egg laying caddis has to dive bomb the film in order to penetrate it to lay its eggs. It makes no sense that a rising pupa can have the the velocity to penetrate the film when it is rising against gravity and traveling through water that is 700 times as dense as air.
The meniscus stops the ascent and the pupa must push it's thorax against the film to form a "trap door" through which it emerges. After it emerges, it spends a variable amount of time on the water and then it flies off. But during emergence at the film, a caddis is as vulnerable as a midge or mayfly.
One of Gary Borger's favorite lines is that you cannot run with your pants down. The sparkle dun is a mayfly emerger with a trailing shuck - eg, it's pants are down. Similarly, the X-caddis with it's zelon shuck is an emerging caddis with it's pants down. Craig Mathews once told me to tie to with a shorter wing than a regular EHC, because the wing is not fully emerged.
See step 6 below, "You can also tie the X-Caddis with a shorter wing to imitate partially emerged cripples and I do that as well on some flies."
http://www.charliesflyboxinc.com/fly...m?parentID=129
Regards,
Silver
"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought"..........Szent-Gyorgy
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Originally Posted by planettrout
