Favorite flies for fall fishing

'I call the big orange fall caddis the iceberg hatch."

"Why is that?" my friend asked.

"Because ninety percent of the action is underwater. If you're fishing on top you miss most of it."

His face lit up in a knowing smile. I was talking with Gary LaFontaine, who probably knew more about caddisflies, the flies to imitate them, and when and how to fish them, than anybody. His landmark book, Caddisflies, was published in 1981 and remains a bestseller among flyfishing books. An original copy in decent shape will bring about $150 on eBay.

Gary was a good friend and our conversations kept coming back to flies and materials.

We were incessantly tweaking, trying something new, and scrapping old notions of what we thought we knew when we discovered something that worked better.

That's the way my favorite fly for the fall caddis hatch evolved. I first designed the fly for the ultra-picky rainbows in California's Hat Creek – the stream that became the model for modern wild trout management.

I cut my fly fishing teeth on Hat Creek. I fished it from from my teenage years into my forties. The patterns I developed there came with me to Montana. And none of them follow the same dressings now as they did when I first tied them.

That favorite Caddis Drifter nymph I told Gary about in our conversation wasn't the same then as when I exported it from Hat Creek, and is different, now, than when I told him about it some twenty-odd years ago.

If you're a fly tyer, the fly is easy enough. Start with a standard #6 or #8 wet fly hook. Wrap an underbody of non-lead wire to weight the fly, then dub the body, make a couple of turns of a pheasant rump feather to simulate wings and legs, then dub the head.

Take a look at the photo. If you can come close, that's good enough. The fly should be about the same size and shape of a natural caddis pupae, and should look buggy and move on its own when fished.

The version I fish today uses a mix of burnt orange and pale olive rabbit/antron dubbings such as Hare-Tron mixed into a base of Hare'e Ice Dub in gray. Play with the proportions until you get the color about right. Remember that the naturals aren't pumpkin orange, they're a neutral, delicate shade of orange. Start with equal thirds of each material and go from there. For the head or top portion of dubbing, blend some of the body mix half-and-half with additional gray Hare'e Ice Dub.

If you're not a fly tyer and don't know anybody who is, stock up on whatever October caddis nymph your local fly shop recommends. That'll get you in the game, and you'll catch some fish. You don't need to immerse yourself in the endless tweaking that LaFontaine and I did to catch some fish, and have fun.

That said we watched to fish counts go up the more we tweaked.

You can fish this fly like a slow-moving streamer, on a slow draw-pause retrieve as you swing it or run it down and across. Or, you can fish it under a big dry fly or indicator. Start by setting it deep in the early afternoon, and move it closer to the surface as the underwater bugs – the iceberg part of the hatch – move up in the water column as they prepare to hatch later in the afternoon.

Those big orange bugs are pretty conspicuous to the trout and they search them out. The takes are greedy. You won't have any trouble knowing when to strike.

I've probably caught over a hundred trout on this Caddis Drifter or a similar nymph for every dozen I've taken on the October caddis dry.

When it comes to dries, my favorite for fall fishing is the Brindle 'Chute.

You can fish it in sizes #10 through #14 and get close enough to the dark-bodied mayflies we see in the fall. It was originally designed for the hecuba or fall drake in #10, but since then has found many other uses.

The big ones also do well for the October caddis. In #12 and #14 they pass for several dark-colored fall hatches.

Pick a size, and use it as a searching pattern. It works well when it should, and often when it shouldn't.