Being that I happen to live in what appears to be the exact center of a sea of corn, I have not yet had the oppertunity to fly fish for trout before. since this is the case I spend most of my time tying flies for bass, pike, bluegill and crappie. Trout flies tend to be much neater to look at though, and since stocker trout will be going in my neighborhood lake very soon I decided to tie up a few trout flies. However, being both a dabbler and a creature of habit, I chose to tie up my caddis with the short fine cheek hair of a deer that I shot recently, and dyed with orange koolaid. Do you think the color will work? more importantly, do you think it would work somewhere where they actually have trout?
it should work somewhere but dont forget to throw it at some bluegills! they’ll devour it!
Thats where my love for orange flies comes from…catching 10" gills!
It would work in a size 8 for October Caddis.
Flies in about that size and color have been good go-to flies for me the past two seasons. I seem luckiest with them when the sun has gone off the water until it’s dark.
the late night makes sense, I was reading a book where guides were interviewed and gave advice, one of them mentioned fishing the color of the day, IE on a grey day fish grey flies, red day (IE sunset) then fish red flies.
Eric
This makes me wonder, what size caddis imitations do you ues most often? The fly in the pic was tied on a #14 dai- riki 125 emerger hook. but i also tied some in mustad 94840 sizes 12 and 14…what other sizes should I tie?
Except for that one species, most of the caddis I fish are 12 and smaller. 14 and 16 most common.
That looks great. My son and I leaving Friday for our nine day annual trip to the East side of the state. We wil use stimulators and caddis in reds, yellows and oranges in sizes from #8 to #12. We do very well with these alone. Will also use dropper. Our boxes are filled with flies just like yours.
Regarding the hook: in my experience, caddis ?skitter? on the water more than mayflies do (and on rivers this is usually upstream or in little spastic circles, but seldom downstream). I expect the butt of the emerger hook will sit IN the water and thus the fly shown could be twitched or fished dead-drift (river or pond), but would not skitter well. The 94840 will slide across the water better. So I suggest look ahead on how you plan to present the fly before you tie on whichever version. Orange caddis can be as large as size 10, but only at the end of the season. I agree that size 14 is about right most of the time.
Thanks for the insight. I remeber reading Al Campbel’s article in the intermediate tying section about fishing the caddis but had not taken into account how the profile of the hook would affect it’s performance. My main thought was that the gap on the 280 would make hooking easier, I completely overlooked the action that it would have on the fly. A very useful and informative piece of advice.
Fish