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Little Black Caddis
Tied by Jerry Caruso |
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Thread: Black
Wing: Black CDC feather
Abdomen: Black CDC feather
Hook: Size 24 shrimp/caddis pupae
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| Tying Instructions |
| Place hook in vise, take CDC feather stroke the barbules toward
the tip, then tie the feather in by the tip at the back of the hook
and wrap forward, forming the body(body should be about 3mm long).
Make a couple of wraps to hold feather, then trim excess. Strip
the barbules from the excess, and lay the clump on top of the hook
shank(just like you would a bunch of deer or elk hair) and make a
couple wraps. This will flare the fibers. |
| Fishing Tips |
| The Little Black Caddis started out as a CDC and Elk tied according
to the recommendations of a couple of pattern books. They all said the
LBC was a size 16. Out came the size 16 hooks, and I tied a half dozen CDC and Elks put them in my box for the weekend. Got to the stream and the LBC's were all over the place. Got a chance to compare my fly to the real thing. Bummer. My fly tied on a size 16 was way too big. Caught a couple of the caddis and took them home to examine. The real caddis measured 7mm (close to the size of a standard size 16 dry fly hook) from head to wing tip. The books were right the caddis was a size 16. The body of the caddis measured 3mm, maybe 4 mm. I fished out some of my smaller Shrimp/Caddis hooks, and settled on a size 24, although a 22 would have done the trick. Wrapped my CDC body, discovered I didn't have any deer hair fine enough to use. Stripped the barbules off of a black CDC feather, tied them just like I would deer hair, trimmed the front even, then trimmed the wing to the correct length. Took these out the next week and caught a couple of trout on them. In spring, the LBC's seem to emerge, and stay on the surface, literally walking on the
surface toward the bank or rocks. A dead drifted fly didn't draw much
attention, but at the end of the drift when the fly started skittering
across the surface. The strikes were explosive. There are LBC's on
the streams right now (late September), but these can't be seen skating across the surface. They tend to hover over riffles, and the fish seem more interested in emergers. General Caddis observation, on all of the caddis I caught this year, the body was 50 to 60 % of the wing length. i.e. If the wing length was 10 mm (about a size 14) then the body was usually 5 or 6 mm. This ratio was so consistent, that I now take hook size recommendations that come with caddis patterns with a grain of salt, assuming that the hook size represents the whole caddis. I now tie my caddis on hooks, one to two sizes smaller than recommended size. I'll tie a caddis that's suppose to be a 14 on either a 16 or 18 hook. |
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