Opal X Caddis
Recipe - Opal X Caddis
View the Step by Step Instructions
- Hook
- TMC 100 or favorite dry fly hook #14-#20
- Thread
- UTC 50 denier GSP, white or olive
- Shuck
- Crinkled Zlon, gold or amber (all species of caddis have a gold or amber shuck)
- Body
- UTC Opal Tinsel, medium
- Hackle
- Whiting Farms Dry Fly Saddle, light or medium dun
- Wing and Head
- Fine deer hair
- Note: The deer hair on this fly is very important to it?s float-ability and silhouette. I have rarely found anything in a bag that satisfied me. I go once a year to a deer hide processor and look through lots of skins. I normally find the good X Caddis hair just above the white belly in front of the rear leg. Look for the smallest skins. You won?t find much. I am looking for very fine, yet hollow hair with extremely short dark tips. Look closely at photo #9. Those dark tips are not 2 mm long. The rest of the hair is hollow.
Everybody bow down to Craig Mathews of Blue Ribbon Flies in West Yellowstone, Montana. Formerly from West Michigan, Craig is the developer of arguably the best caddis emerger pattern of all times, the X Caddis. His simple tie consists of a crinkled zlon shuck, a dubbed body and a wing/head of fine deer hair. It was a natural for the tinsel body conversion.
The Opal X Caddis had its christening on the Madison River one evening in July. It had been reported that the evening caddis activity had been of biblical proportions, so I was ready with a cornucopia of patterns. It began just before dark. I was standing in less than knee-deep water looking upstream into a pod of trout at least a dozen strong. Big heads everywhere. I went through every pattern in my caddis box with no takers. I was stricken. Now mostly dark, I turned my back on the fish, switched on my light and started digging. I came across the X Caddis patterns I had tied with the tinsel body. What the heck. I tied one on. It was magic. Casting up into the pod and zone striking as the fly drifted back, I had a take on nearly every cast.
All of my new patterns include a season or two of serious field testing before I take it public. The Opal X Caddis was no exception. My long time angling buddy, Tom Champine and I were anchored at the base of a huge cliff face on the Missouri with Larry Eller, our guide. Tom agreed to use a hatch matching, dubbed X Caddis although he knew he would likely get his butt kicked. He did. My Opal X Caddis took 10 fish before he had a hook up. The pod of trout were feeding mostly just below the surface, but the tinsel bug brought them up.
I no longer carry any dubbed, hatch matching X Caddis. They are all tied with Opal Tinsel mostly in #16-#20. This is my favorite pattern for our Black Caddis hatch in Michigan. The opal body is nothing like the dark gray body on the naturals but it is not uncommon at all for fish to move to eat the Opal X Caddis. That speaks volumes. This is another magic bug that needs to be in your box.
