Importance of Caddis Flies to us.

[Byron haugh]

Let me be clear. I probably use various stages of caddis fly imitations more than I do mayflies. I probably fish some stage of the caddis fly much more often than I do mayflies. Obviously, what I use depends upon what is happening on the water. If there is a good mayfly hatch in progress, I use matching mayflies. But, if there is not a mayfly/stonefly hatch in progress, I usually turn to some stage of the near-ubiquitous caddis.

I have mentioned here, in the past, that the caddis fly, I believe, has historically been underrated by early fly fishermen in the US. Some of the oldest books on fly fishing I have suggested that the caddis fly is not very important to the fly fisherman.....particularly compared to mayflies.

Anyway, I was re-reading a couple books recently and came across a couple statements which I believe are absolutely wrong, but do reflect some of the earlier thinking amongst some, I believe.

First, a quote from a chapter in a book entitled "Masters on the Nymph", which is a book of "articles" by many famous fly fishers. The book was edited by J. Michael Migel and Leonard M. Wright, Jr. and was published in 1979. In the book, one of the contributors is the duo of Al Caucci and Bob Nastasi who are a couple of my heroes.

The quote on page 44:



The book itself:





Then, there is this quote from the book "A Book of Trout Flies" by Preston Jennings, published in 1970, in which he states, on page 8: