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GATECRASH
THE CADDIS FEAST
Steve
Thornton uses a material called Nymph Skin to produce
an excellent low floating representation of the emerging
caddis.
A bright sun shone through leaves
on the trees, shafts of light made the dancing riffle
sparkle in the warm evening. Brown trout made splashy
rises to fluttering sedges as they rode the riffle.
They were rolling everywhere, but refused all my dry
offerings. Swallows screamed with the joy of the impending
feast and swooped along the course of the pool, feeding
avidly on the fluttering newly hatched insects with
the aerobatic skills of Battle of Britain Spitfire
aces. My dry Sedge drifted through the feeding trout,
unmolested. The fish were expending the kind of energy
usually associated with dries, but on closer examination
I noticed none of the sedges - except for a few -
were taken from the surface.
"They're nymphing", I whispered. The browns were intercepting
the pupae as they rose to the surface.
My fly tin contained nothing
that looked like an emerging sedge pupa other than
generic emerger patterns. On went the reliable old
Klinkhammer, and although it took a brace of browns,
I felt that I'd missed out. Netting a couple of samples
of the sedges from the riffle, I placed them in my
little glass sample bottle, intending to take them
home for further reference at the vice, but I couldn't
do it, they reminded me of the doleful look my springer
spaniel gives me, so I had to let them go.
That was in the late summer of
'98, and the winter months saw my scapel blade cut
through many unsuccessful attempts at creating anything
like what I saw in my sample bottle. What I wanted
was a buoyant pattern giving the correct silhouette,
texture and translucency. I tried to keep away from
something that had to have a hackle or foam to hold
it up, because I wanted to work it within the top
twelve inches of the surface. It also had to hang
the right way up and cling under the surface film
if I wanted it to.
It
was while I was working on another pattern
that I found the material I'd been longing for, Nymph
Skin. I could wrap this on and the abdomen shape was
created by altering the tension when winding it on.
It gripped the previous wrap so well that the material
only touched the hook shank at the tie-in and tie-off
points, forming a hollow air pocket. I'd found a buoyant,
simple to tie, soft but strong abdomen with the best
segmentation I have ever seen. I could have made ten
a minute if all I wanted was to finish them with a
simple dubbed thorax, but I like to do things the
hard way, therefore heat-kinked legs, head, eyes and
antennae, mixed with the right materials to make it
move how I want it to, had to be added. You don't
have to do this, can easily create the body and finish
it off as you wish. I've since made other patterns
from Nymph Skin, such as Stoneflies, Baetis Nymphs,
translucent Midge Pupa, Heptagenid, and different
shaped emerging Sedge Pupa.
Late this spring, I was back
at the same riffling beat on the Wharfe, with a set
of my new Emerging Sedge Pupae. Again, the riffle
was sparkling with leaf-dappled light as the browns
porpoised and splashed. Fluttering sedges left the
river as my new pattern drifted inches under the surface.
The line stopped with a positive take and after a
good tussle I released a ten-inch butter-gold brown.
An hour later when the hatch was over, I had released
14 beautiful browns back into the dancing riffle.
This pattern now has a permanent place in my fly tin.
Give it a try this coming season.
Emerging
Sedge Pupa
Hook:
TMC 947BL or TMC 206BL, size 10 to 16.
Tying thread: Power Silk
or Dynacord Superfine Midge.
Abdomen: Nymph Skin,
translucent or natural.
Thorax cover: Flexibody,
any colour.
Wings: Scintilla or raffia.
Thorax: Natural brown
cul de canard.
Legs: Two pairs of Lady
Amhurst pheasant centre tail fibres glued together.
Antennae: Lady Amhurst
pheasant centre tail, one fibre each.
Head:Davy Wotton MC 13
or Kapok fine dub.
Marker pen: Edding permanent
marker, dark brown, chisel tip.
Glue: Any flexible glue.
Nymph
Skin is available through:
Angling Pursuits (0141 944 7658)
Virtual Nymph (01472 340266)
Jan Siman (Europe) (tel: +420 19 72 42207, web site:
www.siman.cz/main.html)
Whitetail Fly-tying supplies (USA) tel: 001 419 843
2106
Edding Marker pens are available from Lathkill Tackle
(01629 735101)
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