Northwoods:
Sorry to hear about your arthritis. These patterns might be a little easier on the fingers for you.
Here?s an easy, and super effective caddis pupa:
http://globalflyfisher.com/patterns/taboucaddis/
The materials as listed make a great fly, but you can get creative using any stuff you have on hand. You can substitute all kinds of stuff:
Body: can be dubbing, or a marabou rope (twisting a couple strands like the chickaboo in the step by step), or crystal flash, peacock herl or whatever.
Ribbing- can be thread or wire
Head: ostrich or peacock herl, marabou dub (or rope), fluff from any dark colored feather used as dubbing or black bead if you want some weight.
Wing: any hen feather, partridge etc
Flash: if you wanted to put some crystal flash or antron under the wing for some sparkle- not necessary IMHO. Or you can drop it in some frog fanny silica powder, even a bead head. When you sink the fly, the powder will give off a huge sparkle of trapped air.
Legs: you could also do a wrap of soft hackle (hen, partridge put on over the wing and pulled down to make a throat, or a few ends of the marabou rope pulled down and tied in as a throat and pinched to length if you use dubbing or other stuff for the body.
Easy ?Muddler? type deal
For the back of the muddler you can use marabou, hair (bucktail, squirrel, fox body or tail), or a rabbit strip. Or saddlle feathers tied in paired like a deceiver, or tied in flat over a sparse ?sprig? of bucktail tied in at the tail position to keep the saddles from fouling and wrapping around the bend of the hook.
For the head- Use sculpin wool or a synthetic fiber like Kinky Fiber, Flash Blend (or Mirror Image for smaller flies) in place of spun deer hair head. You don?t spin the material like deer hair. Just cut off a hank and bind it down in the middle of the shank, fold both ends back and put a couple wraps in front to prop it back, then put on another clump and work your way up the shank towards the eye. You alternate putting the clumps on the top and bottom of the shank. Once you have it all in place you trim it into the shape you want. Stroke some of the fibers back before you clip to make a smooth transition to the rest of the fly like a collar on a muddler.
If you want eyes, you can use doll eyes or whatever. To put them on use Plastidip in a bottle with a needle applicator. Position the eye where you want it, and go under the fibers with the needle and apply the stuff to the back of the eye and give it a squeeze.
Here?s a couple versions tied for SW with flatwings, tented wings and bucktail with a pretty good explanation of the steps. You can take the basic idea and downsize or modify for FW:
http://www.stripersonline.com/surftalk/showthread.php?t=564954
Although this is a big SW pattern and the fibers are left long, here?s a vid that shows the basic steps in tying the material on the hook and fixing the eyes. For a muddler version you?d trim it short, and downsize and tie it on whatever size hook.
http://www.aswf.info/images/bunkertest640medlow.mov
For variations, you can tie this with a small dumbbell eye on top of the shank to invert the fly, or use a bead or conehead (it will fish hook point down with a bead or cone)
Hope these help.
Good luck,
Mark