Hook: Mustad 94840 #18
Thread: Sheer 14/0 White
Tag: UTC Wire silver
Bead: Whiting Brown, peacock herl, Whiting white
Another pattern from “tying small flies” by Ed Engle: Renegade. I chose a silver tag instead of the gold in the original pattern. A interesting pattern that should float nicely in the surface and give a good profile.
Hook: Mustad 94840 #14
Thread: Sheer 14/0 Brown
Tail: Hareline Mayfly Tail White
Body: Polishquills Stripped Peacock Orange
Thorax: Wapsi Squirrel Spikey Dubbing
Wing: 2xCDC White
The stripped peacock eye makes for a very good segmented body, here I have tied it on a no-hackle CDC with a 94840 from Mustad. You can of course strip the feather yourself and color them the way you want, but the quality you get from polishquills.com is great and it saves a lot of time!
View from above: the split tail can be a bit tricky to get the first time you try it, but once you get the hang of it it should be easy to do. Here I have used the thin mayfly tail from Hareline, but you can (and I often do) use any hackle/feather to form a tail.
A family picture:
Hook: Mustad 94840 #20
Thread: Sheer 14/0 Brown
Body: Whiting Bronze Brown
Wing: Wapsi Premo Deer Hair Natural Brown
I follow a lot of blogs and read my own planet.dryfly.me daily to get inspiration and ideas on new patterns to try out, the other day smallflyfunk had a #20 deer hair caddis that I reallly liked the look of. I got two new strips of deer hair not long ago: the Wapsi Premo Deer Hair, which I really enjoy working with on slightly larger patterns, but on smaller patterns I have never used much deer hair since the previous strips I’ve tried just wasn’t good enough for tying in on such a small hook. So: this #20 pattern was a just the test I needed to see how it holds up.
The quality of the hair is great, the #20 caddis was a breeze to do, the limiting factor is actually getting the wing small enough when you hold it to tie it in! If you are tying caddis or other patterns that require deer hair: go into a shop and really get a feel for how it is, and spend that extra money on a good strip of hair, it will help you a lot in the future ( or you will end up, like me, with lots of bad pieces of hair in a box ). Read this article on choosing hair on globalflyfisher.com
The caddis on my thumb for size:
Hook: Mustad 94840 #14
Thread: Sheer 14/0 BrownTail: Mayfly Tails
Body: SLF Squirrel Spikey Natural Fox, UNI-Mylar #16 Gold/Silver wrapWing: Hareline Para Post Wing Dark Grey, White Foam
Spent spinners are a good addition to any box that will work both in lakes and slow-flowing rivers: it gives a great profile! I tend to experiment some with a pattern when I sit down to tie up some for fishing, so this time I tied up some in different colors, with/without the foam head and with/without the tinsel wrap around the body.
The split tail is starting to align up, this takes some time the first times you tie them up!
White wings with pale-yellow body should be a good visual indicator in a river
The wrapping of the body doesn’t align up perfectly, but this is not something I tend to stress a lot with when tying up for fishing purposes.
Hook: Mustad 94840 #18
Thread: Sheer 14/0 White
Tail: Soft hackle
Body: Hareline Turkey Biot Quills Lt. Olive
Wing: Whiting hackle
Yesterday I was out fishing for trout in a stream here in Oslo and this pattern got me some small trout, with a sage TXL-F #1 and 6x tippet it was a good saturday to go trout hunting! The mustad hook is really strong and solid for its sice (#18) and this pattern will occupy a row when I go for autumn fishing in september.
I don’t go for perfection in every fly I tie for fishing: if you look closely this one could have done with a better quill body, but when tying up a large batch I don’t really worry too much about small imperfections like this.
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