It’s fun to turn over rocks and see what kinds of critters are lurking beneath them. This video is really good at showing the different types of creepy caddis out there–I love them! Plus it’s super helpful to know what kind of bug life is happening at any given moment on the stream. For SoCali streams, you can’t beat caddis imitations. Think green.

If you want to get deeper into the beloved caddis fly, here are a couple of excellent reads.

First is the classic “Caddisflies” by Gary LaFontaine. Gary used to hang out at Fisherman’s Spot decades ago and apparently was a really nice guy as well as being an obsessed researcher and writer. Written in 1981, Gary discovered the synthetic Antron held air bubbles, which could mimic a caddis pupa! Actually, he wrote about his Emergent Pupa pattern that “All the air bubbles clustered around the fly turn it into an attractor as well as an imitator, often making it even better than just a perfect copy.”

The guy was a star.

For a more approachable book with pics that will give you a glimpse into the different encasements mentioned in the video, check out “Bug Water” (2010) by Arlen Thomason. I love the opening paragraph:

“Bug water is a soggy place inhabited or visited by creepy crawly creatures we collectively, if imprecisely, call bugs.” Gotta love the alliteration!

See you on the river, Jim Burns