Caddis searching pattern - from failure to success

On Mon, 2 Aug 2004, Peter Charles wrote:

As far as the swing goes with this pattern, the first third dead
drifted didn't produce a single hit. The middle third where tension
comes on then fly and it accelerates towards the middle of the creek
produced about 40% of the hits and the last third, where the fly was
slowing down, produced the bulk.

Well is it so critical to use a caddis pattern or will the old-fashioned
"variants" and "spiders" work just as well?
__________________________________________________ _____________________
\ Mu Young Lee
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On Mon, 2 Aug 2004 02:13:43 -0400, Mu Young Lee
wrote:

On Sun, 1 Aug 2004, Peter Charles wrote:

But oh my, does it get attention on the swing.

I've only had limited success with that. Anyone out there have generic
clues as to where and when this techniques is effective?

Mu

_________________________________________________ ______________________

In my neck of the woods you can get by on four, Hydropsyche,
Cheumatopsyche, Rhyacophillia, and Glossosoma (spotted sedge #14,
little sister sedge #18, green rock worm #14, and tiny black caddis
#20, respectively). All of these caddis exhibit swimming egg-layers.
The first two are primarily tailwater species that do well in warmer
condtions while the last two are cold water species. I can do all of
my caddis work on the Grand with just the first two, though a
Glossosoma is handy early in the season. You should tie the first two
with both light and dark wings as they tend to get progressively
lighter as the season matures.

A Kings River Caddis is a great pattern for the spotted sedge while
the Henryville Special is a great, high floating, pocket water fly for
GRWs. I also tie the KRC pattern in GRW, LSS, and TBC colours/sizes
as well. The KRC style is a perfect, downwing generic style for
almost any caddis so I replicate it in the colours and sizes I need
for any of these bugs.

Peter

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Clarification:

Cinnamon Caddis, Spotted Sedge, Hydropsyche bifida, and the
Ceratopsyche are all the same bug as far as we're concerned. H.
bifida was renamed Ceratopsyche. Some spotted sedges don't have
spots, hence the cinnamon caddis name.

My references for all of this a

"Caddisflies" by Gary Lafontaine
"Caddis Super hatches" by Carl Richards and Bob Braendle
"The Caddisfly Handbook: An Orvis Streamside Guide" by Dick Pobst and
Carl Richards
"Hatch Guide for New England Steams" by Thomas Ames, jr.
"Trout Stream Insects: An Orvis Streamside Guide" by Dick Pobst

Peter

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Clarification:

Cinnamon Caddis, Spotted Sedge, Hydropsyche bifida, and the
Ceratopsyche are all the same bug as far as we're concerned. H.
bifida was renamed Ceratopsyche. Some spotted sedges don't have
spots, hence the cinnamon caddis name.

My references for all of this a

"Caddisflies" by Gary Lafontaine
"Caddis Super hatches" by Carl Richards and Bob Braendle
"The Caddisfly Handbook: An Orvis Streamside Guide" by Dick Pobst and
Carl Richards
"Hatch Guide for New England Steams" by Thomas Ames, jr.
"Trout Stream Insects: An Orvis Streamside Guide" by Dick Pobst

Peter

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Mu Young Lee wrote:

On Sun, 1 Aug 2004, Peter Charles wrote:

But oh my, does it get attention on the swing.


I've only had limited success with that. Anyone out there have generic
clues as to where and when this techniques is effective?


That's THE question. The technique is an easy and fun one but figuring
out when to use it is what's tough. It's a technique that works better
in some places than in others and I've been unable to find the reason
for it. It's is an especially good technique on my home river during the
Summer. Below are some things I have picked up about fishing a fly with
action, whether it be skittering or swinging or lifting or......

Times to try it:

When there are active flies about - caddis, stoneflies, craneflies, etc.
about

When you see splashy rises

During the dog days of Summer when you don't want to dredge the deep
holes for fish, fishing feeding riffles and giving your fly some action
will sometimes bring fish out of their doldrums.

When you see flashes of fish up in the water column.

When you haven't had any success with more traditional methods.


Places to try it:

Like Peter said, shallow riffles are probably the number one place.

The upstream lip of pools.

Sometime a slow dead driftish swing through a pool will work.


Willi

On Mon, 02 Aug 2004 12:22:42 -0600, Willi wrote:



Mu Young Lee wrote:

On Sun, 1 Aug 2004, Peter Charles wrote:

But oh my, does it get attention on the swing.


I've only had limited success with that. Anyone out there have generic
clues as to where and when this techniques is effective?


That's THE question. The technique is an easy and fun one but figuring
out when to use it is what's tough. It's a technique that works better
in some places than in others and I've been unable to find the reason
for it. It's is an especially good technique on my home river during the
Summer. Below are some things I have picked up about fishing a fly with
action, whether it be skittering or swinging or lifting or......

Times to try it:

When there are active flies about - caddis, stoneflies, craneflies, etc.
about

When you see splashy rises

During the dog days of Summer when you don't want to dredge the deep
holes for fish, fishing feeding riffles and giving your fly some action
will sometimes bring fish out of their doldrums.

When you see flashes of fish up in the water column.

When you haven't had any success with more traditional methods.


Places to try it:

Like Peter said, shallow riffles are probably the number one place.

The upstream lip of pools.

Sometime a slow dead driftish swing through a pool will work.


Willi

I think the "where" is more easily answered -- where the bugs are.
That's not a facetious answer -- the Hydropsyche I'm imitating is a
lover of fast riffles -- which is probably why it is useless dead
drifted in slow water. Every single hit I had yesterday came in fast
water on the swing.

I'm a lazy fisherman who knows too much. I have to force myself to
use my knowledge to fish more effectively. I like to teach others but
I can't be bothered to do it myself unless, of course, I'm doing a
demo. I'm out to relax so concentrating on a miriad of little details
is too much like work. BUT! There's no doubt in my mind that if you
key in on a few bugs, learn their habits, and learn to fish them
according to their habits, your hit rate is gonna go way up. I've
made the decision that I'm going to pay close attention to just three
bugs, Hydropsyche, Cheumatopsyche, and Rhyacophillia -- learn where
they live and how they live, then fish them accordingly. These bugs
cover the waters I fish in Southern Ontario and are abundant through
most of the season, with only the need to add the Little Black Caddis
in the late spring, before my trimvirate gets active. I'll keep some
mayflies in the box for those days when they're abundant, but if I'm
not swinging a streamer, I'll be swinging these instead.

If I see any caddis hitting the water, that's my signal to get these
swinging. If I see bulging or jumping rises, that the signal to swing
emergers and tossing dries instead. If I see nothing anywhere, then
I'll swing these through a riffle simply because I don't like
nymphing.


Peter

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Peter Charles wrote:


If I see any caddis hitting the water, that's my signal to get these
swinging. If I see bulging or jumping rises, that the signal to swing
emergers and tossing dries instead. If I see nothing anywhere, then
I'll swing these through a riffle simply because I don't like
nymphing.


Although, IMO, dead drifting nymphs is THE most effective technique day
in and day out, it's not a very fun way of fishing. Swinging wets and
some of the other nymphing techniques are much more fun. However, they
are not as consistently effective and it's hard, at least for me, to
determine when they are going to be effective.

Willi

On Mon, 02 Aug 2004 20:38:52 -0600, Willi wrote:



Peter Charles wrote:


If I see any caddis hitting the water, that's my signal to get these
swinging. If I see bulging or jumping rises, that the signal to swing
emergers and tossing dries instead. If I see nothing anywhere, then
I'll swing these through a riffle simply because I don't like
nymphing.


Although, IMO, dead drifting nymphs is THE most effective technique day
in and day out, it's not a very fun way of fishing. Swinging wets and
some of the other nymphing techniques are much more fun. However, they
are not as consistently effective and it's hard, at least for me, to
determine when they are going to be effective.

Willi



I think the success of nymphing is also because more people do it a
lot of the time, plus they're applying it to places where fish are
known to be. The typical nympher fisher walks up to a run, sees no
surface activity and ties on a nymph then catches a whack of fish.
Would he have caught the same or more with another technique? Maybe,
but most anglers I know are two dimensional: dries or nymphs, so we
don't get to find out.

In heavily fished waters, the ability to do something other than nymph
can connect you with a lot of fish. Nymphers tend to stand in one
spot, swingers tend to move, so I frequently fish up to a nympher,
then walk around to continue downstream. It's quite common for me to
catch a fish on both sides of him as his pounding have pushed fish out
of the run. I really don't feel at a disadvantage by resorting to
other methods.

Peter

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Willi wrote in message ...

Although, IMO, dead drifting nymphs is THE most effective technique day
in and day out, it's not a very fun way of fishing. Swinging wets and
some of the other nymphing techniques are much more fun. However, they
are not as consistently effective and it's hard, at least for me, to
determine when they are going to be effective.

Willi


As a general commentary . . .

As a follow-on to my last post -- I think that emerger fishing offers
the maximum advantage to anglers, not nymph fishing. The bulk of the
instar larval and pupal stages of burrowing/crawling mayfly and
cased/net building caddis are mostly unavailable to trout, living as
they do in the interstitial zones of gravel, pebble, and cobble or
burrowed into the silt. Before they're ready to emerge, they're only
available when dislodged or during biological drift. Grubbing trout
can get at some but we can't imitate that approach. Better nymph
opportunities lie with the free swimming larval forms that the nymph
fisher can easily imitate and use to enjoy success, but they only
represent a fraction of the total nymph population. However, it's
during emergence, when even pupae tucked under rocks must expose
themselves to predation, that our best shot exists.

The nymphing trout basically sits in its feeding lie picking off
drifting larvae, rarely straying very far. But the trout feeding on
emergers is far more bold, roaming about, and more likely to be
actively feeding, as opposed to the static trout that is
opportunistically feeding. These two conditions, exposed larvae/pupae
and actively feeding fish provide us with our best chance, however as
Mu points out, this is also the toughest form of fishing to get right.
I'm sure many successful nymph fishers unwittingly blunder into
emerger success by drifting their nymphs along with the emerging
mayfly larvae.

These two points together, with the tendency of caddis to emerge over
prelonged periods during the day and the season, are the reasons why
I'm try to pay a lot more attention to these emergence opportunities.
My recent Whitemans experience can't be taken too far but it is
encouraging that presenting a fly that is both visually and
behaviourally correct can get much better results than the "chuck 'n'
chance it" of blind nymphing.

Peter

On Mon, 02 Aug 2004 20:38:52 -0600, Willi wrote:



Peter Charles wrote:


If I see any caddis hitting the water, that's my signal to get these
swinging. If I see bulging or jumping rises, that the signal to swing
emergers and tossing dries instead. If I see nothing anywhere, then
I'll swing these through a riffle simply because I don't like
nymphing.


Although, IMO, dead drifting nymphs is THE most effective technique day
in and day out, it's not a very fun way of fishing. Swinging wets and
some of the other nymphing techniques are much more fun. However, they
are not as consistently effective and it's hard, at least for me, to
determine when they are going to be effective.

Willi



I think the success of nymphing is also because more people do it a
lot of the time, plus they're applying it to places where fish are
known to be. The typical nympher fisher walks up to a run, sees no
surface activity and ties on a nymph then catches a whack of fish.
Would he have caught the same or more with another technique? Maybe,
but most anglers I know are two dimensional: dries or nymphs, so we
don't get to find out.

In heavily fished waters, the ability to do something other than nymph
can connect you with a lot of fish. Nymphers tend to stand in one
spot, swingers tend to move, so I frequently fish up to a nympher,
then walk around to continue downstream. It's quite common for me to
catch a fish on both sides of him as his pounding have pushed fish out
of the run. I really don't feel at a disadvantage by resorting to
other methods.

Peter

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