What they see?

"Peter Charles" wrote


For example, I've read here and been told by people that they have
little success with Lafontaine's patterns. I don't claim to be a
genius with them either -- but I'd speculate that we're missing the
critical ingrediant that we don't fish these patterns correctly.


You are likely right, but I own and have read "Caddisflies" a couple times,
and have a video of LaFontaine tying and fishing his patterns. I do my
best to fish them as he says .... the Deep Pupa, dead drifted, ah deep ...
the Emergent, dry .... and I have better luck with other patterns fished
best I can to mimic the same behavior, myself.


But, to be honest, if a fish is rising anywhere it's unlikely I'm fishing
deep ... more and bigger fish there or not. So the Emergent Sparkle Pupa
has received a much fairer test, at my hand. For the "struggle at the
film" stage I currently prefer an Iris Caddis .... similar to the LaFontaine
pattern in many ways, but more effective in MY hands ..... get one wet and
look up at it and it nearly shouts "eat me, eat me ... before I get away"

Another standard approach is the soft hackle ( I 'think' this is what you
mean by Yorkshire ... not sure ) and I've noticed and mentioned before that
if one the right size and general color is floating IN the film at the right
level, it WILL get eaten. That level I define as "you can see a bump in
the film, where the fly is, but not the fly" As I typed the previous
paragraph about the Iris Caddis I had a light bulb moment. The bend in the
film when a SH is most deadly undoubtedly causes a light show at that spot,
for our trout. The humped back of Zelon on the Iris and the basic form of
the Sparkle Pupa could mimic that light show. The Zelon picks up water
from capillary action and to my mind looks like glowing water around the
body of the fly .... much as a 'bent menicus" looks

One last note: I mean no disrespect of LaFontaine ... I think I own all of
his books, 3 or 4 at least .... but I think the observations he made and
Mike and others confirm will eventually be worked into better patterns than
his series. Keep us posted Peter ... I think caddis are STILL the least
understood of the common aquatic insects important to trout. If my knee
surgery helps, I'll spend far more last light hours on the Madison this
summer ... and it is caddis heaven/ hell .... depending on whether you're
doing it right at the moment ..... I admit it's hell more often for me than
heaven