The Muddler and Harry Lamire
The Following is an excerpt from Flies For Atlantic Salmon & Steelhead which can be purchased from Amazon HERE
When I wrote Steelhead Fly Fishing (1991) and was hunting for variations to the original Muddler and the marabou streamer versions, the number ran off endlessly with the all-black Muddler universally popular. Much of that popularity catered to the hitched fly with a deer hair head trimmed short.
Setting the small, flared head just on top in Grease Liner-fashion was a simple change that produced a wonderful waking fly, especially when the loop was taken just behind the flared stubble. Adding a small bunch of body fur for a tail helped balance the fly, but a feather wing isn’t necessary, and never really is if waking your Muddler or a facsimile is the goal. Mark Pinch’s Riffle Dancer takes the flared tip end “wing” and divides it and splays it to a swept back 45-degree angle. When hitched, the fly’s three-point trimaran landing—head, wing, and wing—makes so much commotion that if tied with deer hair dyed green, bass would eat it up. Judd Wickwire’s Riffle Express has the flared wing butts spread out, coated with a glue, and trimmed into a circle, an organic Turbo Cone, the size of the head determining the size of the wake. Steelhead rise to the strong wake and not to the fly.
During the 1980s the simple style of a dubbed body and flared stubble to a full-spun-deer-hair head became popular in the Skeena country. The name Disco Mouse dated the period and prevailed, the name perfectly describing the erratic movements of the fly on the swing under tension. It sprang from the Bulkley Mouse, a fly by Andre Laporte, that I successfully fished on that river with Jack Hemingway. Mike Maxwell’s Telkwa Stone was a complicated, species-specific dressing that he cast on the Bulkley. Mike didn’t hitch the fly and it floated low and could go under on the swing. I hitched it when we fished together, and the jaunty, handsome little bug didn’t go under until a steelhead took it down.
Bill McMillan’s Steelhead Caddis has a loose, smallish head and has a profile similar to Lemire’s Grease Liner. This fly too, performs beautifully when hitched. If all this sounds like I hitch my flies a lot, it’s because I do. Not just because hitching keeps the fly up and waking even when the fly is water soaked, but the angle of pull comes off below the head of the fly and creates a beautiful little wake as the fly is pulled along on its belly instead of plowing into the water and periodically going under.
The number of fall caddis fly imitations would keep a small cottage industry busy. Here’s two at the top, the first by Harry Lemire, the second by Steve Bird (pictured below).
Not surprisingly, Harry tied his Fall Caddis more exactly than other more impressionistic examples. Steve Bird’s October Caddis Muddler brilliantly borrows from both disciplines, a variation of the Muddler that every fly fisher should have whether fishing for steelhead or resident trout.
Harry Lemire’s Thompson River Caddis offers graphic evidence just how well this legendary angler understood the Thompson. The buggy low-riding fly was clearly designed for “trouty”steelhead, a caddisfly struggling and drowning, fished with slack and leading the fly. The fly can, of course, be hitched if currents demand to prevent the fly’s broad, flat nose from plowing under and preventing a seductive fluttering wake. Harry didn’t just invent this fly at the vise. His Thompson River Caddis is a spot-on match of the great gray spotted sedge, Arctopsyche grandis. (Canada, like the United Kingdom, refers to our caddisflies as their sedges.) This sedge replaces the orange-bodied October caddis in British Columbia’s interior.
Fly Dressings Mentioned In This Blog Post
Fall Caddis (Lemire) - Hook: Partridge Wilson, sizes 4 to 8 - Body: Burnt orange dubbing ribbed with bronze Mylar - Underwing: Gray squirrel tail - Over-wing: Game hen hackles tented over the wing - Hackle and Head: Moose body fur
October Caddis Muddler (Bird) - Hook: Size 6 - Tying thread: UNI 8/0 rust brown - Body: Umpqua October caddis blend dubbing - Ribbing: Fine copper wire, winding counter to dubbing wraps - Rear collar: Crawfish orange hen hackle - Wing: Moose body hair topped with a few fibers of gadwall flank - Front collar/Head: Deer body hair, brown or gray.
Thompson River Caddis: Hook: Partridge Wilson, sizes 2 to 6 - Body: Insect green dubbing simply ribbed with black thread - Wing: Green-sheen cock pheasant back feather over a small bunch of pheasant rump feather - Head: Muddler type head. Harry used moose, but dark body fur from black-tail deer can be substituted. Head is trimmed to a spoon shape.
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