Mother’s day caddis are hatching in SW Montana…perhaps as much as two weeks early.
Been hatching for a week already. Saw a humming bird today. 37 years in Montana and that was a first too.
The best way to catch a lot of fish during the MD caddis hatch is to use a soft hackle wet fly behind a bobber of some kind. But dry flies are more fun. Easier too. See it. Strike it.
I’m not sure how important it is. But real caddis flies sit flat and low to the water. Al Troth’s Elk Hair Caddis has been everybody’s Montana goto caddis for half a lifetime now. I’m not going to argue the following fly will attract more strikes. But I will argue its flat and low-to-the-water profile is more realistic.
Two materials: Zelon wing and grizzly hackle. The Zelon is two colors though. I layer one tuft of bright almost white Zelon on top of dull gray. That way the fly looks gray from below, but bright white from above.
This side of the pond they would fish your fly with with a spider (soft hackle) hung off that. Either tied to the bend of the hook or “two in the eye”. The technique is known as “Klink and Dink” as it was used with a Klinkhammer first, now any dry with a trailing wet or nymph gets called that.
Looking at your flies has given me inspiration to solve a tying problem I’ve been toying with on and off for some time. I think you might like the result. I’ll tie some when I get back from work and show you. In the mean time what size is this beastie? (Ho dear living in Scotland is taking its tole!)
OK. So there is a hard-learned trick to tying down-wing parachutes. Mount the hackle stem. Tie on the down wing. Wind the hackle around the wing’s tie-down point. Couldn’t get any simpler???
But if you tie the wing down tightly there is no room for hackle windings. So when you do wind it the hackle forces the down wing to stand upright as you wind it. And an upright wing was not the original design goal.
[b] ========Here's what I do==========[/b]
Mount the hackle stem.
Make one 360 degree thread loop completely around the wing clump WITHOUT going under the shank. Now make one more loose wind that does go under the shank. Pull down gently on the thread. Jiggle it a little, in order to pull the wing LOOSELY down into position. Now make a half a dozen LOOSE wraps around wing and shank. Now make close to a dozen tight horizontal wraps between wing and shank. This builds up a tiny vertical thread post below the wing. Tightens everything up a bit too. Now you can wind the horizontal parachute without forcing the wing to stand upright. The finished fly still has down wing. And a horizontal parachute.
Yes. That’s a nice fly. The clipped hackle accomplishes much the same thing (a flat and low to the water profile).
If you study the morphology of the natural, in the first photo at the top of the thread, you’ll see the body and wing are almost a pencil line. That’s tough to imitate with Zelon. Your wing and also the duck flank wing (above) do a better job. The legs of the real bug radiate out in a horizontal circle, much like a horizontal parachute. That kind of detail-oriented dedication to mirroring the natural (as best as is possible, within a reasonable tying time) may or may not be important to the fish. But I like to do my best anyway.
Well sure. Absolutely. Put those legs below the wing, rather than on top, and you’re almost there. How much all of this matters to the fish is another question altogether. But to our eyes some patterns do more closely match the bug morphology and behavior than others.
It still needs a little work but I think I have what I’ve been looking for. A down wing with a bullet head and a parachute under the wing.
If you want to include some bright yarn to help you see it you could very easily. I need to work on this to get it a little tidier, and generally polish it.
If you are really good I will tell you how I did it tomorrow.
Cheers,
A.
This design is quite similar to Harrop’s Henry’s Fork Caddis, which has been a very effective caddis pattern for me. Harrop’s uses a biot for the body and CDC ( what else on a Harrop fly ) for the wing. The same basic pattern tied with a dark deer hair wing has also been a very productive pattern. On some creeks, the fish seem to prefer the CDC, and on other creeks, they seem to prefer the deer hair version.
I have always had alot of luck with a sparse EHC (style) tied with Chuck hair vs the elk and grizzly hackle tied gape length. I add a slight chin to the pattern to help flare the head.
I’ll post a step by step, but I’ll do it in a new thread. “Down Wing Bullet Head Parachute”. It may also be another technique you could use to tie the ones you have above.
