Tinsel Body Mother's Day Caddis

The Upper Clark Fork and many other Montana rivers are experiencing great hatches of the Mother's Day caddis right now!  I recently had such an amazing day on the Upper Clark Fork catching huge, jumping browns with this easy-to-tie fly that I had to share.  Like all good patterns, this one can be tied to match any caddis hatch, it is durable, easy to tie, and very effective.  The body of this fly also rides in and below the water surface.  I have found over the years, that fly patterns that do this are usually more effective at fooling picky, wary, and educated trout.

Hook: Size 14 light wire scud hook
Thread:  6/0 Brown
Body: Medium pearl tinsel
Wing: Darker shade elk hair (for MD caddis)
Thorax: Dark colored CDC used as dubbing

Step 1:

Thread your hook and build a nice underbody.

Step 2: 

Tie in the tinsel (approx. 4 in or 10cm) right at the middle of the bend of the hook.  Advance your thread to the the front of the hook.  Then, wrap the tinsel forward creating a nice, smooth body.
(I forgot to take a picture showing just the body but I'm sure you get the idea.)

Step 3:

Stack some elk hair and tie in just behind the eye of the hook.  Cut off the waste and then, tie down the font of the elk hair bunch (unlike how you would for a standard elk hair caddis).

Step 4: 

Rip some CDC fibers from a CDC feather and dub them onto your thread.

Step 5:

Wrap a nice little thorax ball.

Step 6: 

Tie a small head in front of the thorax, whip finish, and your done!

You don't need to use floatant on this fly because of the CDC and elk hair.  After catching a fish, usually a false cast or two gets the fly floating great again.

Also, I'm sure this fly has a given name but I could not find it or info on who originally developed it. Leave a comment if you know either the name or creator.

LaFontaine's Buzzball - A Step by Step Guide

LaFontaine's Buzzballs!

In the book Trout Flies: Proven Patterns by Gary LaFontaine, he sates that he developed this fly for the great winter midge hatches on the Missouri River here in MT.  I have found that this simple and effective little fly does a great job mimicking midge clusters wherever they are found.

In recent years, the Buzzball has had a huge resurgence in popularity with the credit mostly going to Mark Raisler of Headhunters Fly Shop in Craig, MT.  He has found that the Buzzball also works great in the summertime on the MO when there are a ton of dead bug parts on the surface.  I, as well as everyone else he's turned onto this fly (I actually think Sara R. gave me my first one), have had amazing success with it.

It doesn't end there.  Being the endless experimenter that I am, I've taken the Buzzball all over Montana and used in on a variety of waters.  I've tested it on everything from the freestone rivers and Georgetown Lake, to stocked borrow pits and high alpine lakes.  I've also experimented with the recipe.  The variable here is the orange hackle used in the original pattern.  If you use brown or black instead of the orange, you can cover a variety of lighting and hatch situations.  I've also found that substituting a cream colored hackle for the orange is extremely effective for the spruce moth which occur on the west-side, freestone streams.

The Buzzball is ridiculously simple to tie, easy to see on the water, and extremely effective in a variety of situations.  In my book, that is what makes a good fly!  Here's the recipe for the original and step-by-step instruction.

Hook:  Size 18-12 dry fly hook (16 is my favorite)
Thread:  8/0 burnt orange
Hackle:  1 grizzly hackle in the appropriate size (approx. 1 1/2 gap length); 1 light dun hackle (smaller, but size doesn't matter); 1 orange hackle (smaller, but size doesn't matter) 


Step 1:

Wrap the hook shank thoroughly and evenly.


Step 2:

Tie in the grizzly hackle in a size appropriate to the hook.

Step 3:

Tie in the orange hackle (size is not important because this is going to get cut).


Step 4:

Tie in the light dun hackle (again, size in not important because this going to be cut) and the advance thread to front of the hook.


Step 5:

Palmer both the orange and light dun hackles to the front of the hook.

Step 6:

Cut the orange and light dun hackles to about hook gap length all around the hook so that it resembles a bottle brush.

Step 7:

Palmer the grizzly hackle forward and then whip finish.

Step 8:

Cut the grizzly hackle flush to the orange and light dun on the top and bottom of the fly only.  Your done!

Purple Haze Quigley Cripple

Purple Haze Quigley Cripple 

Hook:  Size 18 dry fly 

Thread:  Purple 8/0

Tail:  Saddle hackle fibers cut to the same length after you tie them in

Body:  Purple thread for small sizes; floss, dubbing, or 1x 370 Uni Stretch for larger sizes

Ribbing:  Black 6/0 thread

Thorax:  Build a little ball of black dubbing

Wing:  Fine deer hair (dyed green is shown)

Hackle:  Your nicest dry fly hackle in the appropriate size (green grizzly is shown)

Supposedly, this fly was developed when Bob Quigley realized that his Humpy became more effective after it had been chewed up by trout.  All I know is that this cripple pattern is, by far, the most effective dry fly pattern for mayflies I've ever used.  

I use the size and color scheme shown for BWO's but you can tie this thing in any size or color scheme to match any and all mayfly species from baetis to drakes.  You can also tie it really small for the larger midges we get on the lower stretches of the freestones. 

I can confidently say that the Quigley Cripple has caught me more fish than any other dry fly pattern out there.  Feed it to your local snotty, PHD trout today!