Saturday, July 17, 2021
Outdoors
LABEL
tHE OBSErVEr & BaKEr CIty HErald — B1
Rec
B
Saturday, July 17, 2021
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Brad trumbo/Contributed Photo
Five of Trumbo’s favorite big bugs for cutthroat include a large elk hair caddis (far right).
The caddis revolution
The surprisingly short history of a favorite fishing fly
BRAD
TRUMBO
UPLAND PURSUITS
f you’re a fly-fisherman,
think back on your first
trout on the fly. Can you
remember it? Turns out I
cannot, but I do recall my
teenage years spent trying
to crack the code on moun-
tain brook trout in Appala-
chia. While my casting skill
left much to be desired,
habitat selection may have
had more influence on my
struggle to coax a fish to
the fly. Thirty years later,
mountain trout streams take
me back to basics, such
that the last time I carried
a western-style fly rod and
reel into a headwater stream
was probably 2016.
These days I seek eleva-
tion and skinny water with
only a handful of flies of
usually one or two patterns,
and a tenkara rod. Whether
the fishing is actually easy
or just second nature to me
now remains to be deter-
mined, but one thing has
remained constant — the
elk hair caddis. This classic
pattern stands as a staple in
the fly box of trout anglers
worldwide, mine included.
I
Brad trumbo/Contributed Photo
A gorgeous specimen of Montana’s Blodgett Creek brook trout could not resist the elk hair caddis.
Its effectiveness has made
this the first, and often the
only, fly I use on mountain
streams.
So, how did this fly earn
its reputation? There are
approximately 7,000 known
caddis species, which hatch
generally April through
October in the northern
hemisphere. The dry fly
(adult) pattern is often effec-
tive through November with
peak hatch months typi-
cally being June through
September. The October
caddis hatch is well-known
in some areas, including
locally, for remarkable den-
sities of colossal flies that
may be mistaken for large
moths. Fishing a giant
October caddis can redefine
“epic” as feisty fish feast
to fatten up for winter on
the filet mignon of insect
forage.
Tied with a black, brown
or olive body, ribbed with
copper or tensile or not at
all, and topped with hair as
black as moose or bright as
a bull elk’s rump, the pat-
tern is universally effec-
tive. The same olive elk hair
caddis once duped native
brookies in several Virginia
mountain streams only days
before it landed me the Bit-
terroot Slam of rainbow,
brook, brown, cutthroat,
and cut-bow on my drive
back to Washington. That
was July 2020, and that
fly now hangs on my pick-
up’s driver-side sun visor
as a constant reminder of
an exceptional few days on
the headwaters draining our
major eastern and western
mountain ranges.
Given the fly’s popu-
larity, effectiveness, and
commonplace existence as
a renowned fly pattern, one
of the most curious facts
about the fly is that it has
been on the scene barely
over 60 years. The sim-
plicity of the elk hair caddis
pattern led me to assume it
has been around since the
beginning of modern fly-
fishing at the latest.
Seemingly one of the
earliest possible fishing
methods, one may assume
that fly-fishing was
common as early as 1653
with the first publishing of
Izaak Walton’s Compleat
Angler. Surprisingly, one of
the first records of fishing
flies includes a group of
about a dozen salmon
streamers tied in Ireland
in 1789, possibly older
than the first color illus-
tration of flies, according
to the American Museum
of Fly Fishing. Even more
surprising, the first elk
hair caddis is credited to
Al Troth, tied in 1957, far
later than many other clas-
sics like the Adams, which
See, Caddis/Page B6
Colorful confusion: Hiking the
Greenhorns, in the Blue Mountains
JAYSON
JACOBY
ON THE TRAIL
he Greenhorns
are the forgotten
range of the Blue
Mountains.
And not just because of
that color naming conflict.
This is not to suggest
that the Greenhorns are
outright ignored.
The spine of high
ground that separates the
North and Middle forks
of the John Day River has
a typical complement of
Forest Service roads and
trails, and a number of
spring-fed streams that
T
glisten and tumble and
froth as a proper mountain
creek ought to.
The range attracts
plenty of deer and elk
hunters every fall.
But compared with
some of the other ranges
that comprise the Blue
Mountains region, the
Greenhorns come up a bit
short.
Literally short, in one
sense.
The apex of the range,
Vinegar Hill, near the
eastern end of the Green-
horns, tops out at a modest
8,131 feet.
That’s nearly a thousand
feet lower than both Rock
Creek Butte, the 9,106-
foot crest of the Elkhorn
Mountains, and Strawberry
Mountain’s 9,042-foot
summit.
In the Wallowas, Vin-
egar Hill’s elevation would
hardly rate a mention on
most maps, being shorter
than more than two dozen
peaks in that, the tallest
range in Northeastern
Oregon.
(Geographers gener-
ally treat the Wallowas
as separate from the
Blue Mountains, as do
Lewis A. McArthur and
his son, Lewis L. McAr-
thur, in their inimitable
opus, “Oregon Geographic
Names.” But being neither
a geographer nor an author,
I feel no such constraints.
Besides which, it strikes
me as a blatant oversight to
discuss the mountains in
our corner of the state and
not mention the Wallowas.)
Elevations aside, I think
the Greenhorns are com-
paratively overlooked in
large part because they
lack the multiple alpine
lakes that distinguish the
Strawberry, Elkhorn and
Wallowa ranges.
There is nothing in the
Greenhorns that com-
pares with the sheer mag-
nificence of, to name just
three, Glacier Lake in the
Wallowas, Rock Creek
Lake in the Elkhorns or
Strawberry Lake in its
namesake range.
lisa Britton/Baker City Herald
See, Greenhorns/Page B6
Yellow clover on the Tempest Mine trail on July 11, 2021.