Bugs - Mothers Day Caddis - Brachycentus Caddis

When I think of the Mothers Day Caddis which is the American Grannom of the Brachycentrdae family of caddisfly, I think of the day I had on the Lower Sacramento River in April a few years ago.

I was checking out the message board for NCFFB and came across some photos that had been taken the day before. There were rafts of caddis flies in the photos, I mean thousands.I called "The Fly Shop" in Redding to see what was up. They told me that the spring caddis were coming off big time and that it might last a week or two at the most. When this happens on the Lower Sac the hatch can be over in 10 days or linger on for a number of weeks, but that the massive blanket hatch can be over in 4 or 5 days on some years.

With that said, I called up my friend Blake and we headed up to Redding the next day. My son Zack played hooky and came along too.We put in at the Posse Grounds and rowed upstream to the riffle below the bridge upstream of the put-in.

We were early so I parked the boat and Blake and I got out and fished the riffle, wading into position to fish nymphs under indicators. I had a number of bumps once the caddis started popping and a couple of solid hookups. I landed one beefy bow after just about going for a swim when it took off downstream and I had to follow it down. I fortunately was able to land the fish and stopped and thought that was fun, but I really don’t feel like swimming today. I noticed a Fly Shop guide boat with clients working the run below me. It was a run about 300 yards long and they would row up, get set up and side drift the whole run eddy out, row back up and do it again. They were hooking up if not every time, most of the time, sometimes doubling up. After 45 minutes or so, we hopped back into the boat and I parked at the head of the run and anchored. When the guide rowed back up I asked him if he minded if I’d hit the run when they were at the bottom. He replied go ahead as they were headed downstream pretty soon any way. We took turns side drifting the run for awhile until he headed down stream and we had the run to ourselves. Moral is, ask and you shall receive, don’t ask and you’ll get dirty looks.



We were rigged up with Fox’s Springtime Pupa, Hogan’s Spring Fling pupa and some Soft hackles I had tied with peacock hurl bodies. We started fishing the run and had one of the most memorable days I’ve had fishing in Northern California. We fished this run and then crossed over and fished from river left and had similar luck. Our only problem was that our truck was 7 miles down river at the Bonnieview takeout. We could have fished there all day and then just taken out where we put in. Oh well, we still had a great day fishing on down to the takeout.

So, next year check out "The Fly Shop’s" fishing reports starting in mid March and through April tie up some flies with peacock herl bodies and make a point to hit this hatch.

Clay