I always thought that cripple patterns like the original Quigley Cripple were tied to float vertically - with the wing straight up and the hook shaft almost straight down. I’ve also noticed that when Quigley Cripple style flies flop down and float horizontally, they don’t get as much attention from the fish.
Recently I’ve noticed cripple patterns that are designed to float horizontally, e.g. ScottP’s Cripple Stacker (below) or Walt Wiese’s favorite cripple. On most of these the forward slanting wing is the most prominent cripple feature.
When I watch bugs floating downstream, the cripples that I see are horizontal with shucks or wings trapped in the film.
When I fish cripples, I usually only use floatant on the front of the fly so after a drift or two, the back end absorbs enough water to pull the fly off the horizontal attitude. Don’t know how much effect it has on the fish; I’ve caught some on the first cast with a new fly and with soggy ones, too. Another interesting one is Quigley’s Parachute Cripple (I tied like Charlie Craven’s variation)
The hackle on it is somewhere between horizontal and vertical and all that ostrich on the back end soaks up the water. Not a fly I’ve had an opportunity to fish very often, but it does work.
Based on the bugs that I see in the water, horizontal seems closer to real bugs trapped in the film, but vertical seems to get me more strikes. I think the fish can spot the vertical body hanging down below the film/mirror from much farther away.
Also, I get pretty splashy takes on vertical cripples. You’d think the fish would sip the trapped cripple like a spinner.
Cripples like emergers are a term used by fly fishers just like the terms duns and spinners are used. This implies to newbies that cripples and emergers have a uniform appearance, just like duns and spinners. They do NOT!!
Emergers are transitional, that is, they are in flux and changing in appearance. Similarly, cripples are basically emergers that for one reason or another cannot complete emergence. They may be stuck in the shuck, they may not be able to dry their wings ,or pump fluid into the wings to get them to expand. I view cripples as just emergers which are stuck at a stage of emergence, ie, they have failed to complete emergence.
That is the reason that the more vertical forms of "cripples’ may get more takes. They imitate a stage of emergence. As to the splashy rises, that is also consistent with my theory that trout view “cripples” as emergers. They do not know that they are stuck in the shuck. They just know that the pattern looks like an emerger that can escape if they perform a leisurely rise.
A spinner has a classical appearance that correlates with a stage that NEVER escapes. Cripples do not. They imitate a stage in transition that CAN escape, hence a splashy rise may occur.
Look at 4:39 in the “Bugs of the Underworld” video below and you can see the process of emergence in real time. Imagine now that the emerging mayfly is stopped and stuck in the shuck. So are our “emerger” patterns really emergers or by imitating a single stage frozen in time, are they all more properly called stillborns/cripples?
Gary Borger chooses to call these flies “film flies”. Go to his discussion of emergence in his book Fishing the Film (pp. 35 - 37), and you will see that the Quigley Cripple represents a stage 5 emerger.
“The insect then completes the extraction process and begins ‘Stage 5;’ the final hardening of the wings necessary for the full adult stage. This is the time of the … Quigley Cripple, and other sub-adult imitations.”
When you look at the Mayfly Youtube video you will note that the nymphs do not suspend vertically. They suspend at an angle.
They orient themselves so that their dorsal (posterior) thorax is in the film and they break through the thorax so it acts as a window through which the crawl out of to emerge. When they begin to crawl out they have an amorphous shape that is ill defined. So the trout sees the nymphal portion of the emerger under the film, the thorax in the film, with the front portion of the emerging dun above the film. Look carefully and you can see the nymphal shuck empty as the mayfly crawls out of it’s nymphal skin. Later, as the wings of the emerger begin to unfurl, the silhouette of the emerger above water gets larger and looks like the “cripple.” Probably the most popular cripple pattern is the Quigley Cripple.
The reality is that we fish ALL OUR EMERGERS as cripples or stillborns.
All of our emerger flies represent only a single stage of emergence and only that stage during the entire drift of the fly. Note in the video that during emergence, the emerger is constantly morphing and changing it’s shape. But out flies cannot and do not. Therefore, in a very real sense, all of our emerger patterns are stillborns or cripples because they represent an emerging insect that is stuck in a single stage of emergence.
I find the terms emerger, cripple, and stillborn to be identical when applied to the flies we use. Unless we somehow invent a fly that is a shape shifter, we can only imitate a emerger stuck at a single stage.
Great comments, Silver. I agree with you, although old practices are difficult to change. I tend to use horizontal “cripple” patterns for two reasons: They seem to work well and, for me, it is easier to see them. For mayflies, I usually use the Sparkle Dun as I think it well represents a mayfly having a hard time breaking through the shuck and, thus, has the trailing shuck.
For Caddis emergers, I like to use a soft hackle and either let it lay in the film/surface, or use the down and across method and allow it to swing towards the surface.
For Mayfly “cripples” I will also often use a soft hackle to represent a mayfly cripple and do a bunch of quick false casts to dry it and then let it float by a fish holding position.
I admit that I am sort of set in my ways and have had better luck with these two styles of addressing transitional insect imitations than using the more vertical patterns…which I have tried and not had as much success with…
We are all different in our approaches to fly fishing…
