Sedge Pupa Nymph

It is at this stage of life for the caddis when it emerges from it’s gravely case on the bed of the river and floats to the surface to become an adult, that can be a tricky time for anglers to match the hatch and present the nymph to the fish just the way they want it. 

At this point in the caddis fly’s life they are very vulnerable to being eaten by trout because they are simply floating around, often time suspended right in the fishes feed zone. With our weighted nymphs fished up stream we run the risk of fishing our flies below the fish and there so resulting in few takes. However I found that fishing the nymphs with less weight and taking the down stream approach we can put the fly just were it need to be. 

Facing down stream make a cast to the left of right at around 90 degrees or less, the small bead will help the fly penetrate down until the current of the river begins to sweep it up into the waiting fishes feed zone. Often if there is no take on the sweep allow the nymph to hang down stream for a moment and I like to lift and drop the rod tip several times to allow the fly to move up and down in the water to encourage a take form a fish. This can be a very productive approach and here is a dressing that I have used for this in the past:

I begin by placing in the vise a Dohiku 611 size 16,14, 12 depending on the size of the caddis in the river, this nymph is on a size 16. With a 2mm copper bead I tie in some fine clear mono and olive body stretch. 

Then add in some olive Antron wool that will be used for the body and bring your thread back up short of the bead.

To create the body split the wool down the middle so you now have two strands and after teasing out some fine cream dubbing place it between the two strands. Following this bring the two strands back together and twist them creating a dubbing brush, tease out some dubbing and wind it up the body in touching turns. Before you move on the the next step brush the dubbing downwards to the under body of the nymph. 

Then pull up the skin over the body and rib it with the clear mono to create a segmented look to the fly, cut away the mono but not the skin. Before folding it back brush down any fibers from the dubbing that may have been trapped in the ribbing. 

Now tie in two hackle quill from a grizzle hackle backwards and add one natural grey partridge and one dyed olive or yellow partridge hackle as seen here. 
For the thorax create another dubbing brush with you thread, placing some caddis green and dark olive fine dubbing in the brush as spin it well. 

Wined up the dubbing brush till you are at the bead head and pull over one partridge hackle at a time and tie in. Following this pull over the remaining body stretch and secure in before trimming off the waste. 

To complete the fly again brush down all the thorax dubbing and the legs from the hackles, using permanent brown and black markers add some touched on the skin over the back of the fly to create the molted look of the natural insect. 

When you are tying this nymph don't be afraid to experiment with the colours of the dubbing, I also find light creams or yellow's and orange thorax's quite good on different rivers, try and get a look at the naturals and this will give you the best colour combinations for that river. 
I hope you enjoy fishing and tying this fly and thanks for reading my blog, if you would like any other information please feel free to drop me a line on my contact details here and if you are looking for Dohiku hooks or top quality Tungsten Beads feel free to give me a shout for the best prices, or if you would like and of these or other patterns tied for the coming season my contact detail are on the right of the page.