Do you tie elk hair caddis with a hackle or not. Do you think it makes a difference.
I have tried both and I have not noticed a difference in fish catching abilities. The no hackle version is almost too quick to tie. I love it.
I haven’t tied an elk hair caddis in so long I don’t remember. I use the CDC and Elk ( http://www.danica.com/flytier/steps/cdcelk/cdcelk.htm ) for almost all my caddis imitations now. Easy to tie and very, very effective.
Magazine article (I think could have been online) recently re this vary matter, Author tied and fished both ways, when he wanted to break the surface tension and float low he used hackle less. faster water or top feeding he used hackle.
Both work
Eric
I fish a lot of fast mountian streams and I find the palmered hackle is essential for the fly to float. However my current favorite version is the CDC & elk hair caddis. It uses a CDC feather for the body and no hackle. Very simple to tie, very durable, it floats like a cork and the fish love it!
Here is a link to the recipe…
Thanks for the link. I will tie some up for fishing rainbows next Sunday.
I haven’t used an ehc for ages. When I did use them, I consistently tied them with hackle. Mostly fished them dry on fairly fast, rough water. The hackle helps in that regard, also for skating them during caddis egg laying periods, which I believe was the original purpose of the hackle.
The past couple years I have been using the Harrop’s Henry’s Fork Caddis in the original CDC wing version and a variation with a dark deer hair wing. That fly has been excellent. It wants to ride low, which makes it a great emerger / cripple, or an adult, or a spent caddis. Simple to tie**, floats very well with either CDC or the deer hair wing, and very durable. The CDC version is a bit difficult to see, so I tie a poly yarn post for visibility.
I’ve heard of the CDC and Elk before but not seen a description or tying instructions before the link posted by Ron and Ken. Looks like a great fly. I do have one question - if he uses deer hair, WHY IS IT CALLED CDC AND ELK ?? Me thinks I’ll be tying up some of these soon - CDC and Deer, that is.
John
** Tie in a biot and wrap forward to mid shank for abdomen. Tie in CDC or deer hair for wing, long enough to go past the bend of the hook. Tie in peacock herl and grizzly hackle. Wrap herl forward and tie off. Wrap hackle forward and tie off. Create small head with tying thread and whip finish.
Add a zelon shuck and you have an X-Caddis.
Regards,
Scott
The past couple years I have been using the Harrop’s Henry’s Fork Caddis in the original CDC wing version and a variation with a dark deer hair wing.
http://wcflies.com/blog/2009/03/henrys-fork-caddis/
Like that?
I too have been tying the EHC with CDC. Simple and effective
I do tie my Elk Hair Caddis with hackle. I prefer the heavily hackled fly because the hackle allows me to “skitter” the fly across the water. For somewhat slower water I use the X-Caddis, which is essentially an EHC without hackle and an added Z-lon shuck.
That’s the basic fly, with the author’s variations noted. The original, as tied by Leslie Harrop at a demo where I first saw the fly, used the recipe noted in my first post here.
Biots make a great body, and are very durable. I have tied a variation using a bundle of CDL fibers for the abdomen, on smaller flies and for tan caddis. Leslie used three CDC feathers, as I recall, and no “overwing” as shown in the linked pattern. She also used grizzly hackle. The amount of CDC or deer hair pretty much depend on the kind of water you’ll be fishing. Same for trimming the hackle, which I do on some flies used on softer water.
The deer hair version is just that - the same fly ( no overwing ) with a dark deer hair wing. On one creek I fished this fly, the fishies wouldn’t look at the CDC original, but were all over the deer hair variation.
John
Not being one to leave a perfectly good pattern unmolested, I have tyed them with tail and wings made from hair off the bottom of a snowshoe hare’s foot while hair off the top was dubbed for the body. Of course I threw in a couple of winds of hackle. It is just another flavor of Franken-fly that has caught fish for me. The flies are uglier than home-made sin. Warren got to see one last Friday.
Ed
Hi Passlake,
The EHC is one of my favorite flies and I fish it in many variations. I generally use hackle in the larger sizes but stop hackling the fly at size #18 or smaller. Since I do most of my fishing in relatively swift, free-stone streams, I don’t think the fish care if the flies are hackled or not. This dry fly is also very productive when it’s fished as a wet fly on a wet fly swing. 8T 
I’ll probably fire somebody up with this, but since no one else has popped with this I’ll venture forward. The “original” Elk Hair Caddis was originated by Al Troth and was always tied with hackle under the elk-hair wing. Simple steps: attach thread, bind in ribbing wire, dub slim body, attach hackle in front of dubbed body, wrap hackle to rear of hook and tie off with ribbing wire, rib through hackle, tie off wire, bind on elk-hair wing, finish head and you’re done.
Here’s a good link with the simplest of instructions and photos:
http://www.flyfisherman.com/Learn2Tie/elkhaircaddis/index.html
Good luck.
Kelly.
P.S.: I tie most of my caddis patterns with deer hair and no hackle so they ride low in the film. I especially like Craig Matthew’s X-Caddis with the trailing amber shuck - also with no hackle.
I also make sure to wrap thread through the hair butts before trimming them and tying off the head. This adds to durability and the wing stays put.
I’ll second this approach, Kelly.
In fact, I was thinking about posting a pic of the CDC and Deer ( Elk ) Caddis that I tied yesterday where the butts are completely tied down ( as opposed to Hans’ version on his tutorial, which is similar to the way most pictures depict the head of an ehc or other caddis pattern using deer hair ) and then a small head is built with the tying thread.
A couple whip finishes and some head cement and these flies are virtually indestructible.
Something else occured to me before I started tying a fresh batch of Harrop’s Henry’s Fork Caddis today. Would it be better to tie in the biot by the butt rather than the tip, which was the way I originally learned to tie in biots ?? Since caddis have an abdomen that is fatter at the rear and tapers forward, tying the biot in by the butt should better resemble the natural.
I did tie up several HHFC using the technique of tying in the biot by the butt. Much easier this way, and a better body, at least from the fisherman’s point of view. Hope to get out and test the technique on some fishies in the next couple days.
John
is there a difference if you wrap the hackle from “eye to bend” or “bend to eye” 
I tie caddis dry flies both with and without the hackle and also with a hackle collar between the wing tie down point and the eye of the hook. See the St. Vrain Caddis as tied by A.K. Best.
I believe that the primary advantage of the hackled caddis is that it can be skittered a bit between lengths of dead drift. This is often effective as many caddisflies flutter just over the water or just in the film when egg laying. The hackleless versions give a better silhouette from below but do not lend themselves to inmitating a moving insect. This opinion is mainly based on Gary La Fontaine’s observations in Caddissflies and I sometimes use his dancing caddis pattern which he designed to work both ways.
"is there a difference if you wrap the hackle from “eye to bend” or “bend to eye”
Norm (flytire)
Not really, especially since it seems to be easier from rear to front to follow the progression of the fly. Nevertheless, this thread began as a question about hackling the Elk-Hair Caddis. In my mind the “Elk-hair Caddis” refers to the original Al Troth pattern which used hackle and palmered it from front to back and then ribbed it down with the wire rib from rear to front. Just adhering to the original pattern as referenced with the question of the thread.
As for me, I don’t tie many Troth’s Elk-hair Caddis since I like the low-riders and seem to have more success with them.
Always fun to try to tie up some of the originators patterns though, and then to fish them maybe just to say that you did.
Good luck with this. It’s fun to see how fly tying has evolved and I look forward to wherever the future takes us.
John, I agree with your comments. For me the biot by the wider end makes sense for caddis. Also, look at a natural and you will see how short the actual body is compared to the wing, so maybe a scud/caddis hook in a 1x or 2x short style with a wider gape might be a better choice and improve our hookups (DaiRiki 125 comes to mind, and is what I use for most of my caddis dries). Good luck with those and I hope to hear how they work for you.
Tight Lines,
Kelly
IMHO the biggest advantage to “reverse palmering” of hackle, or tying in at the eye is that you may just end up tying in at the eye regardless.
If you tie your hackle in at the eye and the hackle breaks during the winding process to the rear of the hook, it is a relatively simple matter to tie in another hackle since your thread is already at the eye, in front of the dubbed body.
If you tie in the hackle at the bend of the hook and then dub your body TO the eye, IF the hackle breaks during the winding process, short of cutting off the body and starting over; you have to tie off the thread at the head, start your thread at the bend, tie in another hackle, tie it off, move your thread back to the head and try winding your hackle again to the head…
…or forget all of that nonsense and just tie in another hackle at the eye and use the method described by Kelly. 
BTW - I palmer hackle my EWC for all of the reasons previously offered: skittering, the illusion of flight and better floating on choppy water.