Importance of Caddis Flies to us.

[Byron haugh]

I

I find it hard to even believe that Leonard Wright would have allowed that in the book, given that he's probably best remembered for advocating giving his Fluttering Caddis a "sudden inch" of movement. In fact, I sort of believe one of the contributors is directly challenging him on the subject, not LaFontaine, since Caddisflies hadn't been published yet.

As to the importance of caddisflies, I think they're probably just as important as mayflies; it's just that it's easier to tell one mayfly from another at a glance, so we obsess more over them. And of course, it varies from river to river and time to time.

I will point out, however, that just because we use an Elk Hair "Caddis" and catch a bunch of fish, doesn't mean that the fish were taking them as caddis flies. I've had some very memorable evenings fishing an X-caddis over a sulfur hatch/spinner fall. (There's really not much difference between an X-caddis and a Sparkle Dun.) An EHC could reasonably represent a number of different terrestrials (like a small hopper, e.g.) They're pretty generic flies, and caddis are just one thing they can represent.

I do agree with Byron that caddis were under-estimated in the past.

Reidetz,
I finally found it, I believe. Gary published "Challenge of the Trout" I believe it was called....in 1976. His ideas about the importance were in that publication at about the right time to have been one of the ones promoting Caddis flies as referred to by Wright in that quote. Especially since he was sort of a "newcomer" to the field.