Caddis Pupae

On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 23:15:34 +0100, "Mike Connor"
wrote:


"Peter Charles" wrote in message
.. .

Looking for photos of real caddis pupea of the more common genera like
Hydropsyche, Cheumatopsyche, and Rhyacophilia.


Search on "Sedge" pupae. that should turn up a bit more.

TL
MC


Thanks for the suggestions guys, however, I'm hoping to find
entomology sites rather than fly tying sites so I can find the
pictures of the actual bugs rather than somebody's idea of what the
fly should be.

LaFontaine talks about how he found himself totally at odds with
conventional wisdom caddis emergence. Frankly, I think we
(speaking of the fly fishing community) has done a **** poor job of
understanding the pupal stages of various caddis genera. The fly
fishers of a 100 years ago or more put the time in to learn what works
in the way of Yorkshire wets, etc. but a lot of the patterns today
don't square with what I've read from LaFontaine or from entomology
sites.

As an example, there are a helluva lot of patterns for caddis larvae
but excpet for Rhyacophilia and a few other free swimmers, most
species are net or case so they're not available to trout in a free
drifting form except at dawn or dusk when the biological drift occurs.
Sure the larval flies will take fish but a dead drifted pupa, fished
at the right depth will take a helluva lot more if it's fished during
an emergence.

Nor do we spend enough time with diving females. My very first trout
was taken on an EHC when I was dragging it behind me as I waded
upstream. Hardly the romantic image of one's first trout, but an
object lesson that cadddis don't behave like mayflies. I've since
taken a lot of fish on diving caddis.

Caddis emerge sporadically, rather than as a blizzard, so our window
with caddis is much larger than with mayflies. They hatch over a much
larger period of time, plus they live for weeks in the adult form so
for fly fishers, they offer a lot of opportunities. It's worth doing
the research.

Last year, I put some effort into developing caddis wets with a bit of
success. It was enough to encourage further efforts into producing a
class of flies specifically targeting caddis emergence on either the
swung line or the sunk line. Hopefully they'll take a few fish this
year too.



Peter

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