Originally Posted by
Kevin Elliott
Good question Chris. I have tried lava lace and other similar products and made some very realistic looking flies. But nothing seems to work as well as dubbing, even if it doesn't look as good to the eye. I remember one year collecting some free living green caddis from the river and tying some very realistic imitations using micro chenille, and then getting zero takes on the river. Dad had some very scruffy patterns just with olive dubbing for the abdomen and brown dubbing for the thorax and he was nailing them. My theory is that dubbing collects air bubbles and thereby creates a distinctive flash that the fish recognises as an ascending caddis.
I use rabbit fur in different shades that I then blend with small amounts of antron or litebrite to achieve the right colour. A dirty olive or mustard seems to work best. I always add a bit of hares fur to the thorax blend to suggest legs and achieve "buginess".
Gary Glen Young ties his flies with Holo dubbing. He says that this dubbing gives the illusion of air bubbles.
I've tied some of these flies from the book (Favoured Flies and Select Techniques Of The Experts Vol 1),
and these flies really do work well.
Daryl Human
The solution to any problem -- work, love, money, whatever -- is to go fishing, and the worse the problem, the longer the trip should be. --John Gierach
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