Monday’s rain wasn’t welcome, I’d covered for the folks at work during the holidays and elected to take some time off after they returned to work with sugar-orgy hangovers.
It’s a carefully planned strategy on my part, the combination of Christmas and New Year’s means everyone over-spends, over-drank, and over-ate, and the crowd filing through the door on Monday has resolved themselves to a life of chastity.
Not the chipper and upbeat crowd I choose to associate with ..
I was hoping the weather would hold but it didn’t – so I fiddled with flies and naps, not necessarily in that order. I’d been mulling an idea for a “Skunk-tail Caddis” type fly, destroying it’s two-material elegance with something more involved.
It’s more of my “furry chenille” work – an olive case for use on the Little Stinking, a 4mm bead to make sure it’s rolling in the gravel, with a touch of “worm” color and dubbed ringneck pheasant to offer a hint of motion near the head.
I took it out this morning, and flung it at some fish. The water was plenty cold and higher than my last adventure – I figured they’d be lethargic and reluctant to chase anything, so I just let this roll down with the current to their waiting maw.
I stuck a half dozen fish in the first half hour using a dead drift, then tried it with a retrieve which yielded nothing.
It’s a neat little design, and completely bulletproof. I’ve got some additional tinkering to do with colors and materials, building a variety of colors for some of the trout streams up north.
Mayflies always get top billing with patterns representing every miniscule stage in their development, it’s a nice change to fiddle with something outside the norm.
In the past I’ve just tossed the fly onto the page with little explanation, I thought some additional fly tying coverage was warranted, so I’ve created simple step-by-step tying illustrations on a companion site to assist you in reproducing the fly.
I’ll put some of the patterns mentioned here on that site in case someone actually wants to reproduce them.
I like it! I really like it, I’ll have to give this one a shot sometime, thanks for the detailed info.
Kbarton10 wrote: “Not the chipper and upbeat crowd I choose to associate with ..”
And who might that be? Certainly not the crowd here, as we both know that fly fishermen are a morose lot.
Congratulations on the new site. Very well done.
It’s not really a new site – I just wanted to give the flies a little more detail. In some rare case I might tie something someone else wants to try, this gives them a better view of the materials or technique.
nice. I’ve been monkeying around with a few caddis nymph patterns lately. I agree that the mayfly patterns are overdone, whereas caddis are likely the more abundant invertebrates on many of the waters we fish. They are often overlooked.
Outside of the Trico/Caenis mixture my odiferous little creek has very few mayflies. Plenty are crawling along but I’ve never seen enough hatch at once to get the fish’s attention.
Caddis are quite plentiful – I’m guessing they’re a sturdy crowd and take toxic waste without undue harm.