Hi,
The entomologist and hatch watchers have agreed on the following:
Trout rarely take caddis flies as they hatch on the surface. The emerging caddis takes off almost immediately, thus not allowing the trout a chance to take the adult before it flies off. What we usually see are splashy rises as the trout chases the emerger to the surface.
The swarming of caddis over and around the water are mating swarms and the males fly off to die in the brush or weeds or trees.
The female does return to lay eggs on the water or to dive through the surface to deposit their eggs near or on the bottom.
So, the adult caddis insect which is on the surface long enough for the trout to take them are spent female caddis.
Anyway, I agree with all this from my observations. And, I believe the spent caddis style is the fly for such spent adult females.
Reverse tapered body
Partridge feather for overwing
Hackled at collar
Hackle trimmed flat at bottom for low riding
Trout rarely take caddis flies as they hatch on the surface. The emerging caddis takes off almost immediately, thus not allowing the trout a chance to take the adult before it flies off. What we usually see are splashy rises as the trout chases the emerger to the surface??? what?
A friend of mine once shot a video of a caddis emerging from its pupa. The emergence took less than a second. (Sorry I don’t think the video is on line). That would mean that emerging caddis are not available to trout as a food item of any significance. Once emerged the caddis isn’t able to take flight immediately, it runs and flaps its wings on the surface until it can get airborne. This is a very significant time for trout to feed on them. Skittering a caddis on the surface can produce great sport.
For many years I have used a very similar pattern to yours, Byron. Hare’s ear dubbing, gold rib, grouse covert wing and a red game hackle. It can work at different times, in different ways. Sometimes static, other times you need to move it. Its a case of finding out what the trout want.
The pupa is the major food item here on the Highland lochs. There are many patterns that imitate it. Possibly the most well known is the Invicta. A very good tactic is to fish a fly that sinks when pulled and then pops up again. Takes can be amazing. Recently I have started using this pattern for fish feeding just sub surface on caddis pupa.
The body is Nymph Skin from Virtual nymph with picric dyed ostrich herl (the one in the picture is a little dark), the head and wing deer hair. Crop the head roughly then set fire to it! It gives a great bullet head, and makes the fly a little more waterproof.
Cheers,
A.
I don’t think we can make as many gross generalizations about caddis as we can about mayflies or stoneflies. Different species act very differently. Most take off quickly as Byron suggested. A few species are “runners” as Alan suggested (although I think these are mostly stillwater caddis).
My understanding is that Brachycentrus (grannoms, Mother’s Day caddis, etc.) stay on the water after hatching for minutes at a time.
That said, the spent or egglaying stages are probably under fished.
I have experienced several excellent caddis hatches on a certain east Tennessee river that is known for good hatches of Caddis. When the hatch comes off really good, the surface of the water, in certain places, can be littered with caddis fluttering and drying wings before take off. I’ve witnessed them on the surface for a minute or longer before they take off in flight. And the resident trout go nuts, feeding on them on the surface like mad.
I have witnessed this first-hand, many times, and would respectfully disagree strongly that trout rarely feed on caddis on the surface.
A warning to those of you that share your area of tying with one that does not tye! AianB use of Flame could
cause domestic in tranquility, the smell of burning hair can be down right unpleasant! This could be cause
for possible loss of tying privileges in shared common areas. Try doing it outside first Depending on what
pattern you are tying, the use of a electric soldering gun, iron or wood burning tool may add helpful
control. Fishin’ Jimmy
Both of these are really kewl tyes! I’ve used one like Byrons for a number of years in the mountains, but I don’t know about Alans’!! “Crop the head roughly then set fire to it!” Wow! I’m not allowed to used anything sharp or involving fire!! both for my safety and for those around me!!
Really. Really kewl flys!
A number of good tiers have designed Spent Caddis patterns including Ralph Cutter, Mike Mercer, Mike Lawson. Craig Matthews, Jim Schollmeyer and Davy Wotton - just to mention a few…
Mercer’s Missing Link is one of the more recent additions:
The stage that has allways interested me most, through the years, is the “stuck in the shuck” or “crippled stage”. This is an older pattern that I came across in 1984 that absolutely slays, when a full blown hatch is in progress on still or moving water:
…and more than just a few of the emerging Caddis never make it out of their shucks…
The thought of the smell hadn’t occured to me. I have virtually no sense of smell. A side effect from working with some very nasty aircraft hydraulic oil. Sorry I should have mentioned it.
Cheers,
A.
some species of caddis may be as you described, a generalization, quick to emerge rarely giving the trout the opportunity for a snack. The Rhycos and the Hydropsyche we have in the east stay on the water for much longer than you describe and the trout feast on them as one other poster observed in Tenn. What you refer to as the "entomologists and so and so have agreed’ does not work in this neck of the woods, in fact they are our bread and butter in the spring and summer. Funny, Matthew’s loop wing caddis emerger and his x2 work quite well here. Kinda wonder why he ties them if they don’t stay on the water long…
Gary Lafontaine, on page 31 of his seminal book Caddisflies, states that there are two stages during the emergence that the fish concentrate on. One is when the pupa are cutting themselves out of their cases and the other when they are stuck at the film during emergence.
I believe that virtually all emerging insects have a problem penetrating the film or menicus. We think of the meniscus as the film that supports our flies BUT in reality it is a tough barrier in both directions. The egg laying caddis has to dive bomb the film in order to penetrate it to lay its eggs. It makes no sense that a rising pupa can have the the velocity to penetrate the film when it is rising against gravity and traveling through water that is 700 times as dense as air.
The meniscus stops the ascent and the pupa must push it’s thorax against the film to form a “trap door” through which it emerges. After it emerges, it spends a variable amount of time on the water and then it flies off. But during emergence at the film, a caddis is as vulnerable as a midge or mayfly.
One of Gary Borger’s favorite lines is that you cannot run with your pants down. The sparkle dun is a mayfly emerger with a trailing shuck - eg, it’s pants are down. Similarly, the X-caddis with it’s zelon shuck is an emerging caddis with it’s pants down. Craig Mathews once told me to tie to with a shorter wing than a regular EHC, because the wing is not fully emerged.
See step 6 below, “You can also tie the X-Caddis with a shorter wing to imitate partially emerged cripples and I do that as well on some flies.”
if they had a shuck they would be climbing out of it, just like the iris caddis , it too has a shuck. Craig once told me of a guy he knows that uses pink zelon for the shuck and does just as well or better than their traditional amber color. there goes the therory of matching the hatch. Shucks are translucent when you see them in the water,(polar bear zelon color) they only take on an amber cast when you hold one in your hand. I related this to Craig and it is when he told be of the pink version. he also has a guy who uses red on the x2. Again so much for hatch matching.
It is a spinner tied with rosy wings because of the reddish glow of sunset. Although the natural spinners wings are not red, at sunset the wings look red because the reddish glow of sunset is seen through the spinner wings.
A translucent material takes on the color of the ambient light when that light is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum at sunset. I would ask the the fellow if the pink shuck was as effective during the middle of the day as it was during dusk. Psychologically, we also tend to remember the times when our patterns work the best and if he fished that pink zelon near dusk and found to to be a killer, it may be because of the super trigger effect of a reddish hue for flies at sunset. In that case he was matching the hatch because of the color shift toward red.
I think there are precedents for fly colors that we think are not matching the hatch but really are when we understand what is going on.
Several posts above I said that there are crippled pupae.
Here is what a feller by the name of MCCAFFERTY says in his work “Aquatic Entomology” on page 239: “Adults generally fly very quickly from the water. This knowledge is of importance to fly fishermen because it means that dry or surface fly fishng with caddisfly imitations is usually not very productive. The sight of a caddisfly adult resting on the water surface is apparently one to which most trout would be unaccustomed. It is for this reason and because of the vulnerability of the pupae that caddisfly imitations should be fished beneath eh surface with a rising motion.”
It was Gary LaFontaine who reported that the “air bubble” was the caddis pupae’s vehicle for escaping the meniscus. They would sort of “pop” out of the water. This led him to tie the two variations he invented to capture an air bubble to attract the fish in his pupae imitations.
Perhaps we could read what Craig Mathews and John Juracek say in their book “Fishing Yellowstone Hatches”. On page 46: “The second clue is that there are no insects on the water. Even during a heavy emergence, adult caddis are just about impossible to see drifting on the surface. They generally emerge and fly off unnoticed. This phenomenon always amazes us. Many times we have held our noses at water level just below a pocket full of trout rising madly to caddis, hoping to see just one adult fly off. Indeed it is nothing short of a miracle if you do…” “We fish two types of fly during caddis emergences. One is a caddis pupa, the other an emerging caddis pattern. Depending on the species, one type often works better than the other.”
We have to be careful of what we are describing. Emergence is a process that takes time. Once a insect emerges it can fly off BUT until it is free of it’s shuck, it is still emerging.
Secondly, we split patterns into emergers and adults. An elk hair caddis is to me clearly a fully emerged insect and it is effective. Does the the trout take it as an “emerger” or as an adult? Probably both. So when we say adult caddis patterns “shouldn’t” or “don’t” work, are we talking about how trout view the fly or how we view the fly?
Clearly adult caddis patterns work and I suspect that the elk hair caddis is the second most popular “dry” fly to the parachute adams. The parachute adams is another case of confusion of how we view a fly and how the trout view the fly. We traditionally view it as a dry fly, but is that how the trout views the fly?
In Fishing the Film, Gary Borger argues that it is an emerger because the fly is supported by hackle that is above the fly’s body. So the hackle sits on the film and the body sits in the film. That is the position of an emerger, and Gary calls it the “universal emerger”
This is a similar situation to the sherry spinner. We think that red wings on spinners is not matching the hatch but at sunset it does match what the trout sees.
“Transitional Stage 3. The insect pulls its head out of the shuck, followed almost immediately by the legs. At this point it enters stage 3, which is matched perfectly by the universal emerger: a Parachute Adams (or other fly with an upright parachute post such as the Klinkh?mer). [See ?The Klinkh?mer Special? in the Dec. 2006 issue for more details. The Editor.]”
both for my safety and for those around me!!
