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| Tying and Fishing the Goddard Caddis by Jonathan Jacobs Until recently I had not much employed the dry/dropper technique. Rigging these setups is challenging and fishing them effectively is a skill I’ve been slow to develop. There are so many intriguing caddis emerger patterns out there, however, that it seemed prudent to figure out some way to use them. Trailing an emerger from twelve to eighteen inches behind a high-floating dry seemed worth a shot. The choice of an emergent pupa was easy; I wanted to try Charlie Craven’s Caddistrophic Caddis Pupa. Choosing the dry proved tougher. I settled on the Goddard caddis. It’s both buoyant and visible. I like to fish with flies I’ve tied, so I set about learning to tie it. The process proved daunting. I watched two YouTube videos, one by Tim Flagler and one by Charlie Craven., which proved invaluable and I strongly encourage you to watch both. Mr. Flagler produces fine instructional videos, but overall, I found Mr. Craven’s more helpful. Here are the tying instructions that I worked up for my own reference after gleaning all I could from the videos and tying several flies, followed by some additional musing: · Hook: 3769 Tiemco, size 14 (Heavy wire nymph hook used to withstand thread pressure) · Thread: Semperfli Nano Silk, 50D black body, 8/0 Uni olive for dubbing and to finish the fly · Body: Select cow elk from Blue Ribbon Flies · Hackle: Brown, preferably slightly undersized · Dubbing: Ice Dub olive brown Start the Nano Silk two eye lengths back of the hook eye. Wrap to above the hook barb, forward to the starting point and back to the hook barb. Apply a very small amount of cyanoacrylate glue where the thread is hanging. Bind down a cleaned, stacked and trimmed (hair tips removed bundle of cow elk with the tip ends forward. Hold the hair until glue sets. Carefully wind the thread forward through individual hairs. This will cause the hair to stand up. Center the working thread over the uncovered portion of the base thread. Use a half hitch tool to push the leading edge of the hair vertically and take a few wraps of thread at that point. Clean, stack and trim another bundle of elk hair. Center the thread on the bundle and use a spinning technique. Once the hair is secure, take a few half hitches while using a half hitch tool to keep hair out of the way. Cut the tying thread. Remove the hook from the vise and while holding the fly by the hook eye with pliers, briefly run it through the steam jet from a tea kettle. This will cause the hair to “spring,” making it easier to trim. Go through the arduous process of trimming the elk hair with a fresh double edged razor blade. Grasp the fly between thumb and finger to trim the tail to length, using the arc of the thumb as a guide. Place the hook back in the vise and start the Uni thread. Tie in a hackle with the quill stripped back about a quarter inch. Dub the head, finishing with the thread at the hook eye. The hackle should be dull side forward. Take a turn or two of hackle through the tip of the body and then make tight turns through the dubbing, capture the hackle and tie off. The heavy-gauge hook, the Nano Silk and the cow elk are keys to tying this fly successfully. Standard dry fly hooks bend under the pressure required to properly seat the hair. The Nano Silk thread is very fine which, as Mr. Craven points out (He uses 30 denier thread while I chose 50 denier), is easier to guide through the hair. I tried using Primo Deer as Mr. Flagler suggested. It’s great for flies like the X-Caddis, but the strip I have had hair that seemed too fine for this application. You’ll find that determining how much hair to use is literally a matter of cut and try. If you use too little, the fly will be sparse and not sufficiently buoyant. If you use too much, you will encounter difficulty in locking down the spun portion of the body and are likely to cut through thread when trimming the fly. A brand-new double-edged razor blade will get you through a few flies, but be prepared to replace it. Lastly, do not add antennae, as is often suggested. It’s painful to do correctly and the stiff fibers inhibit hooking fish. I fish this dry/dropper upstream in riffles to beneficial effect and have so far found the two flies equally effective. To date I have tied the tippet material for the pupa to the hook bend. That has worked well, but I am going to try tying the Goddard caddis to the main tippet while leaving a very long tag end on the knot, to which I will tie the pupa. That may produce a more natural looking drift for the dry fly. Editors Note: If you want to learn more about caddis, Jonathan has an excellent video on his YouTube channel where he explains the life-cycle of the caddis and shows caddis fly patterns that imitate each stage of their cycle. I encourage you to check it out at the link below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in3Lm6wSZPY |
Goddard Caddis
