How To Tie The Goddard Caddis

Learn how to tie the Goddard Caddis Dry Fly, including a video tutorial and a full material list. Improve your fly-tying skills here.

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The Goddard Caddis is a classic dry fly with an impressive track record in still waters. Originally crafted by British fly tyers John Goddard and Clive Henry in the 1960s, this fly is famed for its buoyant deer hair body, making it nearly unsinkable. Whether you're a beginner looking to expand your fly-tying skills or an experienced angler aiming to refine your collection, the Goddard Caddis is a must-have due to its proven effectiveness in sizes 12-16.

We've put together a kit that contains all the materials you need to tie this exact fly pattern.

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Material List:

• Hook: TMC 100 (size 14)
• Thread: Black Danville 6/0 and Black Veevus GSP 100D
• Body: Hareline Premo Deer Hair Strips - Natural
• Dubbing: Hareline Ice Dub- Peacock
• Hackle: Hareline Half Rooster Cape- Brown
• Adhesive: Hareline Hard as Hull

Video Transcript

Hello, I'm Carl at Trident Fly Fishing and today we're going to tie the Goddard Caddis. This was created by British fly tyers John Goddard and Clive Henry as a still water pattern in the 1960s. The deer hair body makes it near unsinkable and I recommend you tie it in sizes 12 through 16.

Here's our fly in the vise. The hook we're going to use today is a TMC 100 in size 14, and our thread to start with will be Veevus GSP in black, 100 denier. I like to use this for tying in deer hair - it's pretty near unbreakable. Wrap back to the bend of the hook, right over the barb like so.

We're going to tie in our wing material, and this is just a Premo hair strip from Hareline - deer hair, natural color. We'll get a clump of deer hair about the size of half a pencil width and clean it up a bit. We're going to tie this in with the butts facing the back of the fly. One of the things you can run into with this is that as you're working the deer hair, you can push the hair off the back of the hook. We're going to put a dab of glue up there to help hold this in place. Pull it tight and wrap up through that hair. Don't let go of that hair in the back until you've seated everything. That looks pretty good.

We're going to wrap the thread back to the start of that hair, where we're going to tie in one more clump which is going to form the abdomen of the fly. You want a clump that's maybe just a little bit smaller than what you just tied in. We're going to spin this around the hook - the other clump we did not. Make sure you get all the fuzzy stuff out of it. We're going to cut the tips off the hair, turn it around, and tie it in tip side facing towards the back of the hook. We want to flare this, so we're going to take two wraps - one loose so it starts to flare, then pull it tight and let that hair slip through your fingers. It will spin around the hook. Work your thread up to the eye and push all that hair back.

We're going to get our thread out of the way, so we'll do a quick whip finish here to keep everything from coming unraveled. Take our Stonfo tool out and make sure we don't have any hair that's caught up.

Now that we've got the hair tied in, we're going to shape the abdomen of the fly and the wing. With the Stonfo razor holder, I'm going to come in on the bottom of the fly and make a straight cut across the bottom. Then on the top of the fly, at an angle about the same as the hook eye, I'm going to cut straight in and up across. Then the sides - I'm going to do the same thing, so it's going to have kind of a square cone shape. Go in with scissors and clean up some of that wild stuff, then go back and trim it up again with the razor. Now we'll knock the edges off those corners and try to make the abdomen round.

Now we're going to shape the wing. To do that, I take the fly from the vise, hold the wing in my hand, and follow the contour of my thumbnail. Get that back in the vise.

At this point we're going to change threads and start using Danville's Flymaster 6/0 in black. We're going to wrap this back into the abdomen of the fly just a bit. The hackle for the fly is going to be from a Whiting dry fly cape in brown. I've got one already picked out and sized to the 14 hook. I'll prep it by cutting some barbules off on either side of the stem. We're going to tie that in just into the abdomen of the fly.

For the thorax we're going to use some Hareline Ice Dub in peacock. This is tricky stuff to dub. The easiest way I've found to do it is to take the smallest amount, start to work it around, and it will hang onto the thread pretty well. There we go.

Now we're going to wrap our hackle forward. Take the first wrap through the deer hair, then open spiral turns - wrap up to the eye like you would do on a Stimulator. Capture the hackle, cut the excess off, form a neat little head, and do a four or five turn whip finish with the whip finish tool. Secure the knot. Looks like I managed to catch one fiber there. And some head cement - this is Hareline's Hard as Hull. And our fly is finished.

Please feel free to add comments at the bottom of the page and don't forget to hit that subscribe button to view all the new content here at Trident Fly Fishing. Thanks for watching. I hope to see you again next time.