Green is the Thing

Spring can be a long season here in the Valley. If the winter runs mild like this year, spring gets a head start. In low snowpack years, while worries of wildfire seasons and lower river levels swirl, some bright spots appear. River temperatures come up a bit faster, runoff and late winter deluges don’t blow the river for weeks at a time, fish start moving around a bit sooner and soon all those trout anglers who’ve been hibernating, tying flies all winter, yearning for a good hatch and rise start showing up on the water. Most are looking for early season mayflies. They’re floating and wading the rivers from the lower end where flows are slower, where water runs warmer, where soft water is easier to find. They’re chasing hatches up the river, following the bugs to higher elevations, to faster, bigger shouldered water where easy long drifts give way to technical casting and a need for accuracy. Starting in March and running until about mid-June, the spring fishing season not only shows up, every once in a while, it shows out, too. Whether it’s mayflies, stoneflies or early caddis, spring trout fishing can be epic.

Now, I certainly have a love for those mayfly days. I’ve written about it before, and even as I write this article, I am fresh off a trip where the dry fly gods smiled on me and I got into one of those epic March brown rises where, for at least twenty minutes or so, you can’t really do anything wrong when it comes to fishing. But mayflies aren’t the only game in town come spring. Here on the McKenzie, come late spring and early summer, if you aren’t working a green caddis from bottom to top, are you even fishing?

I must admit a love for caddis flies over and beyond the much lauded mayfly scene. I have my reasons. To begin with, caddis flies go through four stages of a life cycle unlike mayflies and stoneflies. That cycle includes egg, larva, pupa, and adult. In the bug world this cycle, or developmental pathway if you want to bug out on bugs, is called a complete metamorphosis. Let’s be honest; if we’re talking about fishing here, the egg part of the cycle doesn’t matter all that much. Sure, some anglers fish egg patterns. They work. Some might argue that these egg patterns, like mop flies, are for the people. I get it. Some people prefer Tuna Helper to sushi. There’s no accounting for taste. However, those egg patterns are fish egg patterns not bug eggs. In all my years fishing and tying flies I’ve never seen a caddis egg pattern. I’m not sure if hook companies make anything small enough for that to work. Of course, now that I’ve said something YouTube and some AI slopbot will go and prove me wrong. We’ll see.

One major benefit of a complete metamorphosis means, if you know how to play your cards right, you can start fishing the green caddis scene long before the adults are bumbling around on the surface of the water, getting the attention of everyone out there. Truth is a larger larva for the green caddis goes about twenty millimeters or so which is plenty big enough for a fly pattern. In fact, the effectiveness of mop flies has a lot to do with that size window. Further, when these net spinners (a nickname for caddis larva to pupa) start turning out their casings, a well-tied pupa pattern like a Posse Bugger with hints of green or something along those lines works wonders. A bit of flash, a little bit of a chaotic look, a touch of weight, and the next thing you know you’re into a native redside with line screaming off your reel and a grin on your face. If you have anything close to a decent cast, you can fish both larva and pupa patterns at the same time underneath of an indicator to get a sense of what the fish are interested in. No bobdicator? No problem. A caddis larva pattern and a caddis pupa pattern work just as well swung down and across riffles into pools as they do on a traditional nymph setup. Sometimes that swung fly works a bit better, giving the look of food blown out from the gravel bottom cuing the fish into a feeding strike as they wait in the seams for the river to bring them dinner.

And, of course, there’s the dry fly action. Those wonderful, pure, ecstatic moments on a river where all of a sudden everything goes right with the universe, where the evening sun has dipped just enough into the tree line turning the river’s face a spring shade of green, where out of the corner of your eye you catch one, then two then four or five green bugs bumbling and bobbing in that predictable upstream wind, where watching the flight and egg-laying caddis dance on the water you catch one, two, maybe three splashy trout takes along a feeding seam, where you see the telltale stripe of a McKenzie redside flash up from the bottom giving proof to the beauty all dry fly purists lives to see. Yet, unlike those Hollywood hatches seen in the film festivals where the whole air seems to cloud with life, a green caddis hatch out here doesn’t come off in swarms and droves. Our hatches are not that prolific. Instead, you’ll see a few pop in the early to late afternoon, especially in the warm zone just after a late-spring drizzle when the air turns humid and the sun heats your back. More tend to rise in the 3-7pm window, whereby “more” I mean with more regularity. Again, never really a swarm but enough to catch your eye and tell you it’s time to toss the dry. Finally, the green caddis hatch does depend on water temp. Don’t expect much below 52 degrees. Over the years, I’ve found the best water temps for the hatch to be in the 52-55 degree window. That’s a great range for both bugs and fish.

Locally, the green caddis hatch has something of legend attached to it. On the mighty McKenzie you’ll still hear green caddis referred to as “The McKenzie Caddis.” The eagerness with which the trout take the fly, especially on a dry fly presentation, adds heft to its reputation. From a fly tying perspective, there are several patterns out there claiming to be the best on the water. More traditional looks sometimes have a red hotspot on the back end of the fly. There are a few guides I know who swear by a white wing made from bleached elk hair while others go with natural elk hair taken on the fifth morning after the first full moon in October. Dubbing color along with the size and shape of the body are also up for debate. Some prefer a more slender body with a gentle taper while others claim a fatter body with a “buggier” wing give a better profile in the water when seen from the bottom up. I don’t know a single person who ties up their green caddis pattern with dubbing straight from a package. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has some secret blended recipe. Hell, one of my good friends swears the best color match for a green caddis body comes from the leftover sweepings of their bench after they’ve tied up a mess of green drake patterns, mahogany duns, and a few green caddis pupa.

Size matters as well. Most patterns run in the size 10-12 range. However—and this is a big however—tying up a green caddis dry fly on a size 8 hook is not always an ill-advised choice. Some of the best takes I’ve ever seen on the dry fly have come from a size 8 green caddis dry fly fished through fast water where the angler skates and twitches the fly something fierce. Smaller sized hooks struggle with getting that downstream skated presentation right. Larger flies with more elk hair wing tend to do better. More hair gives more buoyancy in the heavy McKenzie currents.

For my part, I tend to fish the early stages of the green caddis cycle with a lot less passion than the dry fly side of things. I like the fireworks of a surface take. One dry fly fish is worth twenty on the nymph, easy. At the risk of giving away some secrets, I will say I’ve found a combination of old and new patterns works best. If I am working a faster riffle with pockets made by boulders or logs, I fish a fatter fly that has more hair in its wing. I prefer natural elk hair with a bit of a longer curve over the back of the fly’s body because, in my observations, the caddis wing covers the whole back of the insect. I am not a huge fan of a foam body because I don’t think it sits low enough in the water. Sure, fishing naturally dubbed flies means I am going to change my fly more often than others. I’m fast with knots. Changing flies doesn’t worry me all that much. My dubbing recipe has three different colors mixed in. No, I am not going to tell you what those colors are, at least not without a good bribe. I’m a light touch. I drink beer.

I have a few green caddis dries with white wings that I fish in a certain light because white is easier to pick up on the shade side of the river. I don’t like a heavy hackle on the body. The stiff barbules can cause the fly to corkscrew in the current. I’ve never seen a bug corkscrew, and I doubt fish have either. Last but not least, I am a big believer in cul de canard (CDC) which is a fancy French way to say feathers from a duck’s butt. Naturally oily and more buoyant than other feathers, CDC plain looks good in the water. I use these feathers either as a replacement for the more traditional dry fly hackle around the body or as an underwing for my elk hair or for a dubbing loop body. That last one I started experimenting with a few seasons ago on smaller streams in the Cascades, up where the green caddis hatch comes much later in the year and the bugs run smaller.

The success of that fly was at least three-to-one over and against my other patterns. Again, no, I won’t tell you where I was fishing but I am a light touch. I drink beer. You get the picture.

Fishing the green caddis hatch never disappoints. As far as time goes, it’s a hatch that lasts longer than most so there’s a little less anxiety around when to start. Flyitus—the paralyzing psychological condition that leads many an angler to lock up when looking at a stretch of river and an over-full fly box—finds a ready remedy with the green caddis. Seriously. I once went fishing with a good buddy of mine, Ben, up in the mountains. To be more specific, we were in Oregon, probably Lane County. I think we were somewhere southwest. In typical fashion, we left town early, feasted on beef jerky and gas station burritos, hit the water just as the sun started to warm western riffles. The morning air was spring cold at that elevation despite promises of mid-80s down in the valley.

I like fishing with Ben. First off, he has the prettiest cast I’ve ever seen. It’s one of those long, lazy looking tempo casts that send out impossible loops across fast seams into teacup-sized pockets. Sometimes I just watch the cast. While the look of it seems to carry a philosopher’s indifference, by watching the rest of him in action, the poetry of that seeming couldn’t be farther from the truth. Ben fishes with an intensity tuned into the river. Second, Ben is the only other angler I’ve fished with who subscribes to the same policy of, “I’m okay, he’s probably okay, too.” Meaning, we fish together like trout anglers seeking shared solitude: within at least a mile of each other where close enough is just around the river bend; where, from time to time, we each find ourselves wondering how we’re gonna get back to the truck after the river crossing we just pulled off; and in places so far outside cell phone service our partners don’t worry if they haven’t heard from us until an hour after dark because that’s how long it takes to get back in range.

When we got to the water, Ben headed up and I headed down a bit. Usual stuff. If memory serves, we were on the later end of spring, probably early June. I hit the water with a slingpack full of fly boxes. I went to the water confident. I figured I had everything figured out. I didn’t. I had nothing figured out. I beat that water to a froth throwing every pattern I had in my box at the river and getting nothing for it. Not a thing. Dejected, disgusted, disappointed, and distraught I decided to go find my buddy. I figured, if I was getting things handed to me so was Ben. I was wrong there, too.

Coming around a bend, climbing over a massive log jam neither one of us had any sense to avoid, I saw Ben standing at the bottom of a riffle and above a likely trout pool. He stood waist deep in the river sending out casts with his signature indifference. Classic. Watching, I saw him yard in at least five fish in less than ten casts. Every fish came with an aggressive surface take. One of those fish leapt above Ben’s full height out of the water. Ben whooped, laughed, marveled at his own skill, the ferocity of the trout. Wild fish are different. Jealous but generous, I watched for a few more minutes until the action died down, until Ben reeled up and hopped from his perch. Turning, he saw me standing there watching. He had a grin on his face from ear to ear.

“What were they hitting on?”

“Green caddis number 10 skated.”

“Did you see a hatch coming off?”

“Nope. But it’s spring and you gotta give ‘em what they want.”

“Green caddis?”

“Green caddis. All day.”