Peeping Caddis pattern.

[shortrod2]

SBecker wrote:
Has worked wherever there has been a large population of cased caddis.

Was it designed as a cased caddis or just a lucky coincidence?

 

[SBecker]

Honestly, it was a coincidence. Like I said, we were playing with tags before a comp. I just happened to do a chartreuse due to the caddis in the stream. When it gets wet it looks really good. The Cdc really gives a bubble case around the black thread and wire.

It is a Dohiku Jig

 

[krayfish]

Donk sounds about right. LMAO

Anyone care to sign the petition I'm drafting to ban vertical jigging in FFO waters?

 

[mike_richardson]

Lame rule anyway.

 

[nfrechet]

 

[sandfly]

nice norm

 

[gutcutter]

All of the flies (and jigs) pictured here will, no doubt catch trout.

Having said that, the peeping/peeking caddis is designed to imitate the phase when the larvae and it's case are either dislodged from their attachment to the stream bed, or are intentionally moving from one location to another.

Lafontaine's Caddisflies describes these activities beautifully. He points out that when they are drifting, they drift with their head in a downward orientation.
When I tie these types of patterns, I like to mimmic that.

Many of the flies (and Shane's jigs) depicted in this thread will drift in the opposite orientation.

The first (top) of nfrechette's flies will drift that way (head down), but his other one won't.

I'm not suggesting that some of the flies pictured here won't work. They will. All of them are tied well. But, I'll bet a bead head gold ribbed hare's ear would fare just as well.

Sometimes I use a bead. Often times I use shot. With the "reverse" tied patterns (caddis head and legs at the bend) I tend to add the shot on a dropper off of the hook bend instead of weighting the leader. First of all, I prefer tight line nymphing and sight nymphing over indy-nymphing or euro-nymphing. Secondly, I usually have a dryfly leader on and am too lazy to change it, so I want to avoid putting shot on the tippet...

When does it matter if you're using a head down peeping/peeking caddis instead of the other flies or a BHGRHE? Probably only when there is a Grannom migration going on just prior to the hatch when the trout are really keyed in on cased caddis.
My $.02
And my flies...

 

[troutbert]

Several of these are imitations of cased Grannom larvae. Do those patterns work better than a version of the uncased Grannom larvae?

Just a green worm with a dark head, or dark bead, in the appropriate size? Those are very productive patterns.

 

[mike_richardson]

I have always used the patterns that you are talking about. I have yet to use these to compare, but have always had luck on using a vinyl rib body in green or chartreuse, with some peacock hearl and a gold or black bead.

Just tied some up with a black head, and chartreuse ice dub with peacock legs as well.

 

[mike_richardson]

Got out for the first time this year. Ended up landing 2 on this pattern, and losing a really nice brown. Missed quite a few more on it. Was very happy with the way they were slamming this pattern. Brown appeared to be a wild brown. Was awesome that the first three fish I had on this year were one of each species.

This was an un-approved trout stream in Cambria county, and these fish are all hold over from last years co-op stocking. Was happy to see that quite a few fish made it through this crazy winter.