Goddard Caddis

Dry fly imitating caddis, for trout and grayling. Advanced. John Goddard and Cliff Henry.

A body of spun and clipped deer hair trimmed to a sedge's tent-shaped wing, and a brown hackle at the front.

Materials

Steps

  1. Attach thread Attach the thread at 60% of the way along the shank with a few turns and trim the tag end.
  2. Wrap thread Wrap the thread to the start of the bend in touching turns.
  3. Spin: deer hair Spin clumps of deer hair round the shank, packing each one back against the last, up to 72% of the way along the shank. Comb out the underfur; pack each bunch back hard against the last.
  4. Trim: deer hair Trim the spun deer hair to shape, leaving a head about 0.6× the gape thick on each side. Flat underneath at the depth of the eye, the top rising towards the rear, the sides flaring back.
  5. Tie in: brown cock hackle Tie in the brown cock hackle with a few firm thread turns. Slightly undersized.
  6. Wrap thread Wrap the thread to 92% of the way along the shank in touching turns.
  7. Wind: brown cock hackle Wind the brown cock hackle forward to 90% of the way along the shank in 5 turns. A couple of turns back into the hair, then forward.
  8. Tie off: brown cock hackle Tie off the brown cock hackle with a few thread turns and trim the excess.
  9. Whip finish Form a small head, whip finish with 5 turns and cut the thread.

History

Developed by John Goddard and Cliff Henry in England; G&H are their initials. The Feather Bender takes the original dressing from a 1977 reprint of Goddard's Trout Flies of Still-Water (1969): a belly of dark green seal's fur, two rusty dun hackles and their stripped stems as antennae. Hans Weilenmann gives the belly as olive. Today it is mostly tied with a hard-packed hair body and no belly, and is better known as the Goddard Caddis; posters on Fly Anglers Online, Weilenmann among them, credit that name to the American tyer Andre Puyans.

Fishing it

Packed deer hair makes it very buoyant, even in rough water, so it can be skated, twitched or pulled to leave a wake, and that movement is often what draws a rise. Global FlyFisher notes that it is easy to see in the last light of a big hatch, but finds it too clumsy for very selective trout.

Sources