How To Tie The Egg Laying Caddis

Follow along with Karl as he ties Barry Clarke's variation of the Egg Laying Caddis.

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There are all kinds of different variations of this fly out there. This one is very similar to one tied by Barry Clarke. It is an easy tie, floats high and is an absolutely fantastic fly to fish when female caddis are on the water laying eggs. Tie it in sizes 10-16 for maximum production.

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Material List:

Hook: Daiichi 1160 (size 12)

Thread: UTC Ultra Thread (Fl. Chartreuse) and Veevus GSP 50D (Black)

Rib: Flashabou (Pearl)

Body: Hareline Cinnamon Tip Turkey Tail Feathers

Dubbing: Hareline Dubbin (Hare's Ear)

Wing: Dyed Deer Body Hair (Natural) and CDC (Natural Dun)

Video Transcript

Hello, I'm Karl at Trident Fly Fishing. Today we're going to tie the Egg Laying Caddis. There's a number of variations of this fly out there. This one is very similar to one tied by Barry Clarke. It's easy to tie, it floats high, and it's great to fish when the female caddis are on the water laying eggs. It's recommended that you tie this in sizes 10 through 16.

The hook we're going to use today is a Daiichi 1160 in a size 12, also referred to as their Klinkhammer hook. It's got a real deep bend to it. We're going to start using some UTC thread in fluorescent chartreuse - this is 70 denier - and we'll get our tie started. A couple of eye lengths behind the hook eye, and we're going to wrap back past the bend of the hook. This is going to form the egg sac. A little counter-clockwise spin to flatten the thread out, and start to build up a ball here.

Once we've got the egg sac formed, we can tie in our next material. It's just going to be a single strand of Flashabou, and we'll run that back to where the start of that egg sac is. Get that in the material clip to get it out of our way.

The body is just a turkey flat. You can also use a turkey tail feather. I think the flats, the individual fibers, are a bit thinner than turkey tail feathers. The coloring is the same - nice, pretty mottled color. We're going to tie these in by the tips, even those up a bit. Cut away the waste ends - we're not going to be able to capture those, so we'll just cut them off. Take out our hackle pliers, and we're going to wrap this up to our tie-in point. There's a nice mottled colored body. We'll capture our material, cut off the excess, and run up our rib. Make some even, open spiral turns. It's just a little bit of flash to the fly, and it also protects the body material, which is kind of fragile. Reach your tie-in point, capture the Flashabou, cut off your excess.

Next we're going to change thread. I'm going to go with some 50D GSP Veevus in black. The wing is going to be deer hair, and I prefer to use GSP to tie that in.

Next we're going to tie in our underwing. It's just some CDC - natural dun colored. I've got one feather all picked out here, and we're going to tie this in right on top at the start of the body. We want it to reach back just as far as the egg sac, maybe. Cut off the excess and even that up.

The thorax of the fly is next, and we're going to form a real small dubbing loop. That's going to be made from some Hare's Ear dubbing - a nice long spiky material. Just a small pinch of this is all we're going to need, the thorax isn't very big. But by putting it in a dubbing loop, it makes the thorax nice and spiky rather than just dubbing it on the thread. Spin that up, and wrap that around to form a nice spiky thorax, like that.

When we reach the eye, we'll capture our material, cut the thread, and run that thread back just about a half an eye length or so. We're going to tie in our wing - just going to be some natural deer hair. Cut a clump out that's maybe a half a pencil width in diameter. Got our Stonfo tool here, rid of all the short fuzzy stuff, put it in a stacker. Tips are all evened up nice, got a few broken hairs in there - that looks pretty good. I'm going to measure this out to be just back to the edge of the back of the hook, a little longer than that underwing, and I'm going to make a spun head. Cut off all of the material that I'm not going to use, pull that out up to the eye, two tight turns, loose turns, now a tight turn, one more, and jump our thread up to the eye - let go. Nice full wing, look at that.

Got our whip finish tool, four or five turn whip finish, seat our knot, and cut the thread. Some head cement - this is Loon's water-based - that'll soak in really good. A little flick cleans the material out of the eye, and our fly is finished.

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