Streaking Caddis

Dry fly imitating caddis, for trout and grayling. Intermediate. Lennart Bergqvist.

A brown dubbed body under a dense deer hair wing; the butts of the same clump are spun round the shank and trimmed to a head.

Materials

Steps

  1. Attach thread Attach the thread at 90% 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. Dub: brown dry fly dubbing Twist a thin noodle of brown dry fly dubbing onto the thread and wrap it forward to 67% of the way along the shank. Slim, leaving the front third bare: hair only spins on a bare shank.
  4. Tie in: deer hair Tie in a bunch of deer hair so the tips reach just past the end of the bend (twice the gape from the tie-in point), angled about 22° up from the shank. Let it flare out round the sides of the body. A bigger bunch than for a wing alone, tips stacked and pointing back. Tight turns forward through the butts make them flare and spin.
  5. Whip finish Form a small head, whip finish with 5 turns and cut the thread. Push the hair back and whip finish at the eye.
  6. Trim: deer hair Trim the spun deer hair to shape, leaving a head about 0.42× the gape thick on each side. Trim the butts to a dense, rounded head, smallest at the eye; clear the gape underneath.

History

Created by Lennart Bergqvist, who also tied the Superpuppan, to imitate Phryganea grandis, the great red sedge: up to five centimetres long, one of the largest caddis there are, and found in Scandinavia. According to GlobalFlyFisher the style began with Poul Jorgensen, whose smaller fly had only a deer-hair head; Bergqvist added the body and tied it bigger. No date is documented.

Fishing it

A sedge for fast water: with that much deer hair it stays afloat in rough, broken currents. It was designed to skate, and skates well; Peter Butler skates it during the October caddis hatch and otherwise fishes it dead drift. A summer fly for trout when the big Phryganea sedges hatch.

Sources